What’s your destination?

One’s destination is never a place but a new way of looking at things.
~ Henry Miller

I’ve been doing a lot of traveling lately, something I love, so this quote captured my attention. It called to mind a quote by Mark Twain:

 “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

We usually only see the first part of that quote: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.”  I think that is often, but not always, true.  We’ve all read about or experienced “the ugly Americans”, those people who wherever they travel, compare their destinations unfavorably to home, those who say, “This isn’t like home,” and of course there are “ugly Americans” of all nationalities.  To me, part of the fun of travel is being somewhere not like home.  Otherwise, why would I leave it? But people sometimes come home even more entrenched in the notion that their way is the best or only way and, as we see every day, there are many not only unwilling to give up their prejudices, but who want to destroy all those not like them.  Travel won’t cure that.

I disagree with the second part of the Twain quote, at least as a given. Many people who don’t physically travel aren’t hidebound, uncharitable, or narrow-minded, and many people can’t afford to travel or travel far, especially to other countries.  But travel certainly offers the opportunity, sometimes forces the opportunity, to see different things, hear different points of view, talk to people who are different from us.  How those differences change each of us varies.

Back to the initial quote by Henry Miller.  No matter where we go or how we go, through physical travel, books, movies, or other methods, we need to be open to and to seek out new experiences, new thoughts, new possibilities.  The ensuing opportunity to change or at least broaden our way of looking at things is a prized destination that can come during and/or after journeys of many different types.  Even meeting people from other places and spending time with them can be a journey that brings the traveler to a new way of looking at things.

Bon voyage!