As we gather the luggage and the socks and tiny tubes of toothpaste, as we close our eyes and push the “Purchase Ticket” button, forcing the obscene numbers out of our minds, I am at once anxious and excited to travel again. Being not the most pragmatic personality, I muse philosophic. So why do we travel? For some people it is to get away, for some it is to get to, for some it is to check off the things on the list (poor souls). Many great minds have pondered why we travel.

“Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.” – Anatole France

I like that, I wander a lot. I pace around my office, I pace back and forth from my desk to the kitchen, from the family room to the garage. This is how I think. For me wandering is pondering.

But why do we travel? To simply know of more?

“The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page. – Saint Augustine

Certainly true. But it is not just the world that we travel to know more of. Intentionally or unintentionally, whether we know it or not, when we travel we come to know more about ourselves. When we travel, no matter how absurdly complicated the arrangements and the planning can be, we are forced to experience everyday things more immediately, more essentially. Where is the next meal ? Where is the next toilet? How do I ask for directions ? It is oddly liberating to have control over so little. When we take nothing for granted our understanding and so our appreciation of simple things is enhanced.

“Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” – Cesare Pavese

One of my favorite things when I travel is the feeling of not knowing, or at least not feeling like I know. I try to un-know when I travel, to open myself to that glorious feeling of discovery that my 4 and 5 year old self lived in. We all have memories of what it felt like to be unjaded. I long to be ignorant of the most likely. I get more excited when I travel, I am more eager and, good, bad or otherwise, I believe more.

I like the feeling of being part of something bigger than what I know. I am made bigger by being shown that I am so much smaller than I am in my familiar world. The world is so much more than my home town, my company, my commute. There is so much more to think about than my phone bills and getting my car tires rotated. In a way, travel can be a form of mobile monasticism. When we travel we must live simply. We choose to experience new places and new situations with no more possessions than we can carry with us. We must open our minds and be ready to learn and to be closer to the universe as a whole in order to simply get from table to table and bed to bed. Camus said “What gives value to travel is fear”. It’s not the fear like fearing for one’s life, it’s the kind of fear that makes you giggle nervously. Fear of what comes next? No, fear of not knowing ( but being pretty sure it will be OK).  It is exciting but a little scary not knowing… it opens the senses, it opens the mind and the heart and the whole world of possibilities. Otherwise what would be the point?
Of course there’s always the food… and the wine…