A Hundred Different Lands
Traveling is an activity that is innate in all of us. It offers us a chance to gain new perspectives and see things you never have before. And the best part is you don’t have to go hundreds or even thousands of miles to experience this. It can happen in your own backyard. I really like this quote about travel by Marcel Proust.
“The only true voyage would be not to travel through a hundred different lands with the same pair of eyes, but to see the same land through a hundred different pairs of eyes.”
For many of us, we travel every day, commuting to work, getting groceries or running errands. Yet we don’t really consider this traveling. Why? Adventure doesn’t start with a location but with mindset. No matter how many miles you travel, if your mind isn’t open to new things it doesn’t matter. Only when we allow our mindset to shift do things really start opening up.
Our modern transportation conveniences have played their own part in this mindset atrophy. We have to travel much farther to feel the same sense of adventure our grandparents did just two generations ago. Only when these conveniences are stripped away do we realize what’s right in front of us. For the land that you’ve seen a million times before starts to reveal things you never knew it had. For me, nothing brings this sense back faster than by walking. Their’s something about getting somewhere simply under your own power that is humbling and freeing. Try walking to the places you frequent and watch your perspective shift. For you never know how many experiences you’ve missed until you do.