Travel tests our ability to face change and represents a great opportunity to practice one of the skills that has allowed human evolution: adaptation. When we move to a foreign country or an unknown place, we are forced to confront ourselves and do without the comforts that make us feel safe and "at home"—but can also trap us in a dangerous routine difficult to break.
The idea that we are at the center of the universe precludes us from asking the right questions, amplifies our pains, and focuses our attention on ourselves. More importantly, it limits our view of what is close to us, known and familiar. However, the human mind needs to explore, push beyond the boundaries of fear, and take risks by confronting a new place, another culture, or more profoundly, the "other"—the different, the stranger—both inside and outside of ourselves.
The journey, the ultimate metaphor of the human experience, is the story of Ulysses, as narrated by Homer, Joyce, and Dante. Going beyond, striving for knowledge, experimentation, and research is what has driven survival—finding solutions to everyday problems by observing them from different perspectives, without being confined to the few available data points. If Columbus had not set sail and Copernicus had not looked to the sky to seek the unknown, we would still be prisoners of ignorance, routine, and a state of stagnation that many mistakenly call "prudence," but which is just the difficulty in accepting the existence of new worlds, unprecedented possibilities, and paths aimed at improvement and progress.
Traveling is like changing your mind: shifting your center of gravity, thinking in another language, walking on different thoughts, and wearing the same shoes but with your eyes looking forward.
Emily Dickinson wrote her masterpieces without ever leaving the walls of her home, but how different the history of the world would have been if great journeys, expeditions, and explorations, either geographical, scientific, or psychological, had remained mere attempts forgotten by the dust of time. Traveling expands boundaries, enriches the soul, and teaches us to face ourselves and the world beyond our doorstep. Confrontation usually throws us into crisis, it's "uncomfortable," but it takes us far.
Traveling is like a leap into the void, into the unknown: it requires trust and courage. As Thucydides wrote, courage is essential because if the secret of life is the courage to move, change, and exist, it is the secret of freedom. Travel is precisely this: confronting our own freedom and respecting the one of others. There is no better way to understand this great life lesson than by setting out on a journey, with the spirit of a traveler, a pioneer, someone who "navigates by sight," ready for the challenge.
Professor Antonio Giordano, M.D., Ph.D., is the creator and head of the Sbarro Health Research Organization, located at Temple University's College of Science and Technology in Philadelphia. Stay connected with him through his various social media platforms, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram, to receive the latest updates.
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