Travel is the Ticket

Travel is one the many wonderful ways to explore all that life has to offer.  To experience the people, flora, fauna, sights, sounds, smells, and of course, tastes of every nook and cranny of the planet is a quest worthy of a lifetime.  I am often happiest when I’m up close and personal with something off the beaten path of my life.  An hike through an exotic jungle, dancing in the rain in an artist community, searching for seashells on a white-sand beach along turquoise blue water, saying a prayer in a thousand-year-old church, toasting in a balloon ride over an expanse of land that is home to elephant and cheetah; listening to a piano and harp concert in a cobblestone square.  I’ll take all of it and more.

The famous author Mark Twain once said this of travel: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.”  I was indoctrinated to the wander lust the hard way — as a Marine Corps brat, I moved a lot when I was a young girl.  It wasn’t easy leaving my friends and being the “new girl” so much.  But it cultivated me in a desire to see what’s out there.  And to be far more accepting and tolerant of that which is different.  Different doesn’t have to be better or worse.  It can just be whatever it is.

There’s so much more to life when it’s experienced from multiple vantage points.  In this time of  uncertainty, with such negativity and strife erupting all over the globe, Twain’s words really ring true. The more we experience that is outside our comfort zone, outside our norm, that requires a refocusing of the lens, the more open to all that life has to offer we become.

So chart a course to somewhere new and open up your heart and mind to a whole new vantage point on the same old stuff.