Home.

Why do they send us off to travel? As I write this I’m flying over Canada on the way back to my lovely home. I ponder the question put to my by a friend back in Glasgow: “Which is more beautiful, Scotland or the US?” Clearly she could not understand the enormity of the question or the vast expanses of diverse landscapes in the US. My answer to this question is not important, but the thinking involved in the asking is. When I go home, I’ll see my beaches, my sand, my lovely island, the miles of pines planted in rows to make paper and houses, the mist on the pond early in the morning, and the loud chirping of frogs in the evening. But I won’t see these as particularly notable or amazing because they are just the way things are. And now I can perhaps say the same thing about Scotland. The rising moors, the cobblestone streets, the whine of the pipes, the glory of blue sky when we get it so rarely: All of them are now commonplace for me.

:

So now I ask again; Why do they send us off to travel?

:

Is it to lose all sense of wonder? To no longer be surprised by anything? I’ve seen and done things which once filled me with trepidation, not anymore. I now have a frame of reference for 18th century architecture, 16th century painting, 12th century cathedrals… And so on and so on.

:

My hope, my sincere hope is that the words I wrote before I left will be prescient of my mindset when I’m back in my old places again:

:

The experience of studying abroad opens the mind to view each norm and nuance of a culture that we previously thought we knew with completely fresh eyes. Going to another culture helps us to see our own, liberates the mind from one-track thinking, and stimulates what sociologist C. Wright Mills calls the “sociological imagination.”

:

Here’s hoping…

Advertisement