Modern Day Travelers
>> May 3, 2010
We are modern-day travelers. We have access to thousands of guide books and references and translating devices, although we rarely choose to use them. We save digital maps to our laptop and backup our blogs to a hard drive. Our connections to friends and family are nearly instantaneous, thanks to facebook and gmail and skype. We travel with gifts of literacy and insight and American passports. Our visa and mastercard debit cards combined with worldwide ATMs rarely leave us in a financial lurch. Our bright white skin opens doors to privileges and places that many cannot access. This shared journey brings with it a deepening of humility, a greater sense of empathy, and a larger connection to people of the world. It brings understanding of injustices and discriminations.
This act of traveling gives me so much perspective, but it also takes some perspective away. With the act of deepening my perspective, it actually serves to foreshorten it.
Being constantly in motion allows meager time for reflection, for processing. Traveling allows for so many experiences, so many new thoughts and visions and ideas and sensory influx that sometimes it becomes a blur. Sometimes my body takes charge and says “Stop!’ Take an afternoon and just sit. Just think. Stop moving. Sit in a straight-backed chair and stare at the wall. Spend some time on what’s inside, rather than what’s outside.
It’s strange, because those that follow a path to perfection, or achieve greatness in thought and spirit focus truly on the moment. The time is Now. In the very act of thinking about the Now, it is already past. There it went. But to live in the present and be cognizant of the Now is the thing that many great spirituals aspire to. Traveling provides that opportunity. Recognition and perception are fleeting, for you move on to the next new and foreign and amazing thing in an instant. And when this pace is maintained, reflection is hard to achieve. Our trip to Aneho was three days ago, a lifetime of experiences have elapsed since then. Why would we and how can we write about experiences that are in the past? The inability for us to “live-blog’ is difficult. It’s hard to compare. It’s hard to revisit thoughts and ideas and perceptions when they feel so distinctly in the past, and when what you once thought is now colored by what you are experiencing now. For this reason, I keep a journal. But its pages are empty of the flashing thoughts and images and ideas - how do you write when you are bumping down a gravel road before the sun has even risen?
This act of traveling gives me so much perspective, but it also takes some perspective away. With the act of deepening my perspective, it actually serves to foreshorten it.
Being constantly in motion allows meager time for reflection, for processing. Traveling allows for so many experiences, so many new thoughts and visions and ideas and sensory influx that sometimes it becomes a blur. Sometimes my body takes charge and says “Stop!’ Take an afternoon and just sit. Just think. Stop moving. Sit in a straight-backed chair and stare at the wall. Spend some time on what’s inside, rather than what’s outside.
It’s strange, because those that follow a path to perfection, or achieve greatness in thought and spirit focus truly on the moment. The time is Now. In the very act of thinking about the Now, it is already past. There it went. But to live in the present and be cognizant of the Now is the thing that many great spirituals aspire to. Traveling provides that opportunity. Recognition and perception are fleeting, for you move on to the next new and foreign and amazing thing in an instant. And when this pace is maintained, reflection is hard to achieve. Our trip to Aneho was three days ago, a lifetime of experiences have elapsed since then. Why would we and how can we write about experiences that are in the past? The inability for us to “live-blog’ is difficult. It’s hard to compare. It’s hard to revisit thoughts and ideas and perceptions when they feel so distinctly in the past, and when what you once thought is now colored by what you are experiencing now. For this reason, I keep a journal. But its pages are empty of the flashing thoughts and images and ideas - how do you write when you are bumping down a gravel road before the sun has even risen?
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