Thoughts on travelling
I always liked travelling, born in a small island Just a few hundred square kilometers, any excuse is great for some change.I have been to London for a workshop a while ago. While I have been to London before, i was never alone, but this time it was different and besides the great work mates I met I was alone in a big city.. feels a bit like those old-ish 80s movies.
There is a beauty in the amazing diversity and richness of different cultures coming together and meeting in a plex like London but then again there is a lot of contrast and I think the edges blur slowly.
At some point during travelling when everything is so different, things start passing by with a general sense of indistiction. This feeling sometimes is like a drug, a hallucinogenic.
Travelling is more than just going from A to B ...
People, faces, buildings, trains, stations, planes airports they are all moving their ways as fast as they can whizzing by, this turns me into a very introspective mood. I get to feel belittled and awestruck at the sheer sizes of these places and I get somehow more close to the world and it’s a bit like more in perspective of where I truly AM.
It reminds me that we as people have the habit to make places and people our homes but the true home is inside of us.
Travelling has two faces to it: travelling outside and travelling inside. I think people like travelling because the more difference you see outside the more rich and diverse your mind becomes. Discovery of the outside world breaks down the barries on the inside.
The impressions we have of our belonging and our “place to fit in” are all pre-concepts which give us comfort zones. Altering this is usually a traumatic experience usually accompanied with cultural trauma or xenophobic alienation. To me the fascination and awe inspired by the pollination of my thoughts from my “usual” life by the novel surroundings overpowers my fears and any Cainophobia (fear of novelty) that is innate to all of us.
There is a reason for this innate fear because our brain is (besides a hundred other things) a pattern matching machine. The less novelty around us the better (as in the less stress there is). Novelty is stressing, and the brain has a hell of a lot of stuff to process when it is in an alien environment. The up side is that while repetition and comfort numbs the mind novelty and “stress” in the brain cause higher oxygenation, and rewards in decoding the surrounding release endorphins which are neurotransmitters associated with excitement, consumption of spicy food, love and orgasm, and … well yes pain (the latter possibly in response as an analgesic).
If a person is completely alienated in his environment and never figures out anything then frustration would be too much but when bridges are built with people, places and things like new routines and new places to fit in then rewards kick in. These rewards can be addictive. The high that comes from the discovery and integration of the new is one of the few drugs that I cannot get enough of.
So in conclusion travelling with an open mind is a hell of a drug ..
To further confirm your thoughts about travel broadening ones mental horizons and expanding our perception on our limited intake of intellectual awareness due to our “Comfort Zones” St. Augustine says the following: ” The World is a book, and those who do not travel, read only one page” Same can be said about life, like Albert E says “Those who make no mistakes, have never tried anything new” The level of satisfaction you get when unlocking something new, to me by far beats the exhausting process of changing my mindset to accept change in order to achieve personal growth.
Comfort zones help for familiarity, but mostly they give people a starting point. It depends how far from the comfort zones to explore differences.
Change always costs in pain, discomfort or to some extreme shock. Cultural shocks are a problem for many people.
d.