Travel Far Enough

Also posted on The Huffington Post

“Travel far enough,

you meet yourself.”

David Mitchell

Muses + Visionaries magazine May/June 2014

Traveling breaks our patterns.

We leave our comfort zones and see something completely new. If we are truly open to the experience, we’ll likely feel emotions we don’t typically feel in our day-to-day lives.

Sometimes, it feels like something is awakened inside us. We are more in tune and alive.

We’re really seeing the countryside or the paintings in the gallery or the people passing by our café on the busy downtown streets. If we listen to tour guides, or passers-by, we may learn something new, something intriguing that we’ve never thought before.

It’s best if we leave our home problems, home.

Don’t dwell on the “to-do’s” or the financial concerns or the knock in the car. They’ll all be there when we return, so it’s best that on this get-away, we leave them there, for then, not now.

Our schedule may change when we travel.

We may sleep late, eat lunch at 2:00, reserve a table for dinner for 9:00 p.m. when, at home, we’re in bed at that time. We may even go to another spot for an after dinner drink or a club to dance, something we haven’t done since our 20’s.

We may parasail over turquoise Caribbean waters or fly in a helicopter over the Grand Canyon, things we consider quite daring and extravagant.

We may learn to cook in a country kitchen in Provence or dress up and go to the Met to listen to an opera when we have no idea what opera is about.

Travel can open us up if we let it.

By trying new things, we may discover things we never knew we liked.

We may discover more of ourselves through the act of going…and diving into the experience of it with abandon.

Photo: Giverny, France (Monet's village)