Travel: So What's the Point of Travel Anyway?

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I was reading a blog this morning written by Tam Warner Minton called Travels with Tam. Tam is a scuba diver that loves to travel. Her post was called 5 Reasons to Adventure Travel. I loved this post but then you don't need to poke me in the ribs to get me going when it comes to travel. She quoted Terry Pratchett, that very funny and much quoted English writer saying:

Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.” Terry Pratchett

I liked that a lot. I recall my son asking me once about taking a walk. His father and I walked a lot to explore our little world so this son was familiar with the routine. He had been on many a walk. But as he grew older he became a little suspicious of the habit. Did he want to go for a walk? He wanted to know where we would be when we finished with the walk. When I told him we would be back home, his thought was that there really was no point in talking the walk if we were just coming back to where we started.

Travel is like that I think. There are people that never leave because they don't see the point in the whole exercise. Travel is hard and, in their view, not worth the effort. After all, they will just come back home.

Then there are people that travel and never want to come back home. They love the escape and think that by not going back they can shed all their worries and cares.

And then there are people like my husband and I that feel at home no matter where we are. We settle into the landscape and watch life like a fly on the wall. Because our home is within us, we know that moving to another place would honestly never change our life. What changes us is the adventure and the experience. We find it is hard to be judgmental after we see first hand what is going on in the world. As Terry Pratchett so wisely said, "Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving."

So, if I could answer my son today when he asked what the point was, I would have to say the point is you will learn something or feel something that you cannot know if you never go for a walk.

Have a wonderful day.

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