Travel is one of life’s most essential metaphors

“The commonality and familiarity of travel may also be seen in the fact that travel is the most common source of metaphors used to explicate transformations and transitions of all sorts, we draw upon the experience of human mobility to define the meaning of death (as a “passing”) and the structure of life (as a “journey” or “pilgrimage”); to articulate changes of social and existential conditions in rites of initiation (of “passage”). …If the essence of a metaphor or a symbol is the use of the familiar to grasp the less familiar or ineffable, then the universality of symbols and rites of passage testifies to the sheer normality of the experience of travel.”

–Eric J. Leed, The Mind of the Traveler: From Gilgamesh to Global Tourism (1991)