(Inspired from the essay of Pico Iyer, ‘Why do we travel’)
“We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves” (Pico Iyer)
To travel means to explore. Most people take travelling as a form of excitement; they travel to take a break from their routine life, to find that peace that they somehow lose during work. No one can work all their life with no joy or pleasure — that only a robot can do. For me, travelling differentiates a man from a robot, and enables us to be a subject of nature for some time, where nature becomes our host and we become its guests. I can’t be both an explorer and a responsible person at the same time; I have to neglect one of the either. I can choose to travel freely without any restrictions or I can choose to stay at home and fullfill my daily duties.
Being a traveller helps us come across various places with different kinds of people and it improves our knowledge of the world that otherwise would be confined to books. It helps us become a better version of ourselves. We can’t really know anything about the world if we don’t get out of the little place that we have been raised in. In order to get along with the places that we visit, it is quite obligatory for us to erase the past memories that we carry. The sadness, the tiredness, as well as the cheerfulness. All of that has to be left aside to travel as a free soul that does not know where it is going.
One of my friends once said, “We travel to live the world of our imagination”. Whatever our concept of a better world, we try to realise it through travelling. To travel means to feel; we need to feel the things that we see otherwise it won’t serve any purpose, as Pico Iyer said: “Seeing without feeling can be uncaring; while feeling without seeing can be blind”.
In one aspect travelling enables us to leave all anxieties at home that we otherwise won’t ever have left. It also helps us understand the problems of other people. We come across different people who belong to beautiful places but their lives are not as beautiful as the places themselves. We for some time leave our problems and we try to understand their problems and share their sorrows. Our desires take a rest when we see the neediness of people. While traveling we try to lower our standards at times to match the standards of those whom we meet. By the end of every journey we will not be the same as we were at the beginning. There will be much more to our knowledge, our behaviour, our thinking.
There is only one life and the world is so huge but beautiful it will be such a shame if we failed to see the beauty of this world and appreciate the blessings of our lord. It will be unfortunate if we just remained confined to the four walls of our small world. Be a traveller not just to enjoy but to be a better person, and make such memories so that when you are old and lying on a bed, you will not have any regret but will be proud of your beautiful journey. You will then not hesitate to leave this world because you will have lived a wonderful life.
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