There are two types of people in the world – those that love to travel and those that don’t. I represent the latter. Perhaps this is because of my family’s history of disastrous vacations. Think on the scale of flooding on the famously dry island of Aruba; visits to emergency rooms with infants; and violent storms that shut down major theme parks for the first time in their history. When one spends savings on an adventure, only to be disappointed by unforeseen detours, the travel spirit dampens. Nonetheless, I decided to join Principessa on a service trip to Peru.
This would be just another notch in my 20-year old daughter’s international travel stick. I, on the other hand, had never used my passport and wasn’t entirely confident that I wanted to for aforementioned reasons. But I’m a sucker for an adventure and knew that the benefits of a trip like this would outweigh any potential travel snafus.
When locals commented with mystified shock at the rare occurrence of rain and fog covering Machu Picchu during the dry season, I tried not to look guilty, knowing that somehow the aberrant weather pattern resulted from my personal traveling curse.
Disappointment was great but the commitment to rise above it was even greater. Principessa and I pulled out every inspirational phrase we could muster to keep our spirits up. This proved to be easier than keeping our cameras dry.
‘Blessed are they who are flexible, for they shall not break’ became a theme for our trip and paved the way for other valuable revelations to surface. Following are the top three.
1.Wherever you go, there you are.
There’s no escaping yourself. We may refer to travel as ‘getting away’ but the only thing we leave behind is the landscape. Yes, we halt our daily tasks and forget our worries for a time, but we take ourselves, our essence, with us. What we fear at home will continue to plague us. What we love will comfort us.
2. Everyone has something to teach you.
Everyone we’ll ever meet knows something we don’t. It’s up to us to seek out the lesson.
- The taxi driver in a chaotic city may teach you how to trust and release control.
- Dependence on your travel companion to interpret the language may teach you humility and patience for those who struggle to communicate in your own language.
- Observing your humble host family who gives freely despite their meager earnings may poke at your pride and make you reassess your consumerism.
3. We’re all the same
People may look different and sound different, but behind the costumes and customs, we’re very much alike. We all feel the feels of life and speak the universal language of emotion – fear, worry, happiness, hope. We each, no matter the culture we originate from, try our best, help each other, hurt each other, and dream.
Going out of your comfort zone is a must if you want to become more than you are – more aware, more humble, more fulfilled. One doesn’t need to travel far from home to expand, of course. We can find these growth opportunities in our own backyards if we’re open to them. But travelling to unfamiliar places ripens us for change.
In a literal or figurative sense, I saw myself in every person I encountered in a faraway land. The beggar and the shopkeeper, the wanting child and the providing parent, the student and the teacher. The more I allowed my thoughts of separateness to blur, the easier it was to see that we’re all one. And the more important it became to me to practice and promote tolerance in a world that seems so very fractured.
Chaos & Clarity 