Travel Opens My Heart and My Eyes
The other day, someone remarked they were envious of my upcoming two-month vacation. But I am not going on vacation. Vacations were something I did when I was juggling work, children and extra-curricular activities, during those years when I fell exhausted into bed at night. The years when all I wanted was to lie on a beach at an all-inclusive and be pampered. So what am I doing these next couple of months? I will be a traveller visiting unknown destinations, exploring new cultures, and learning about myself!
This week, my days are filled with planning and packing. My girls and grandbaby are also visiting for three days, and life is busy! So, I thought I would share some of the quotes I have collected over the years that define what travel exemplifies for me.
(L-R): A wet walk along the River Kwai (Kanchanaburi, Thailand), a yoga and hiking retreat (Asturias mountains, Spain), and nothing like a cold beer on a hot day (Balangan Beach, Bali)
Giving myself to places, and finding myself
“We travel initially to lose ourselves; and we travel next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate.” - Pico Iyer
“When you give yourself to places, they give you yourself back; the more one comes to know them, the more one seeds them with the invisible crop of memories and associations that will be waiting for when you come back, while new places offer up new thoughts, new possibilities.” - Rebecca Solnit
“Being in love with life and recognizing that the beloved IS the world, are among travel's most significant gifts to me. I carry home as "souvenir" the memory of my encounters with people, land and culture beyond my familiar, and I am renewed. I return empowered having traveled well with my self in "our" aloneness. And my curiosity, gratitude and imagination are enlivened.” - Katherine Weinmann
“You go away for a long time and return a different person - you never come all the way back.” - Paul Theroux
“Travel isn't always pretty. It isn't always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you - it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you… Hopefully, you leave something good behind.” - Anthony Bourdain
(L-R): A well-deserved cup of tea after cooking all afternoon (cooking school in Ubud, Bali), finishing the Portuguese Coastal Camino (Santiago de Compostela, Spain), and riding on a camel in the desert (Sahara Desert, Morocco)
In awe of this world
“Traveling – it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.” – Ibn Battuta
“Travel gives rise to its own kind of spirituality: to a grand appreciation for community, to a passionate love of this earth, to an urgent longing for transcendence, and even to a sweet foretaste of death.” - Thomas Moore
"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." - Marcel Proust
"When I say I want to travel, I don’t mean I want to stay at fancy resorts and buy trinkets from souvenir shops. When I say I want to travel, I mean I want to explore another place and become a part of it. I want to explore coffeeshops and hidden streets in foreign countries. I want to hike mountains and walk along quiet beaches. I want to meet people who are not like me, but people who I can like all the same. I want to photograph the people and places I see. I want my mind to be in constant awe of life on earth. I want to see things with new eyes. I want to look at a map and be able to remember how I was transformed by the places I have been to, the people I have met and the things I have seen. This is what I think is at the heart of adventure.” - Becca Martin
The journey, not the destination
"A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving." – Lao Tzu
It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
As much as I love solo travel, I also love travelling with my husband! (L-R): Boating through Amsterdam canals, dressing up for a fancy dinner before hiking in the Chiricahua Mountains is southeastern Arizona, and wine tasting in the Okanagan Valley, Canada
What are your favourite travel quotes?