I have often written that travel has changed me. An obvious, and inadequate statement. Yet, I constantly struggled to put into words what exactly had changed. Simply, it was a feeling. Everything was different somehow, better, and worse. But mostly just different. For many, travel is humbling, enlightening, or inspiring. For others, all they take away is a blanketed idea of “thank God I don’t live here.”. There is no generalization. Just as each traveler perceives the adventure differently, what each takes away is often starkly different. I suppose I ought to clarify, the travel to which I refer is not a vacation, though a perfect worthwhile and even occasionally enlightening use of time, but what I’m referring to I can only equate to a journey. The sort where you are thrust out into the world, forced to encounter it as it is, in all of it’s awe-inspiring beauty, and all of it’s cold ugliness; exposed. It is impossible to venture out into the world in this way, and not to be changed. Perhaps it is life changing, but maybe it’s much less, a small seed that will go undetected, but will continue to shape your life in a way unique to the experience. If you were to suggest travel has not changed you, I would be emboldened to suggest that you are either simply wrong, or that there is something greatly wrong with you has a human being.

Continue reading →