Why do you go away?

Vagablogging :: Rolf Potts Vagabonding Blog

 

Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.

— Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

Why do we go away? An interesting question to ponder.

To explore
To escape
To learn
To clear our heads
To fill our heads
To experience
To think
To heal
To search for something
To find ourselves
To rest
To serve
To create something
…

And what Terry says is very true as well: we travel so that we can come back.

Homecoming is an integral part of journeying. Almost everyone does it at some point. It’s a surprise when we first discover that home did not wait quietly for us, preserved like an exhibit in the museum of our minds. It is sometimes a shock to find that, although we have returned, we are not, in fact, home in the same sense as when we left it. When we take off to travel, we are, in many senses, the place we leave. Indiana is taken to Borneo, Borneo is seen through Indiana’s eyes. When we return, we bring Borneo with us, and he points out things in Indiana we never noticed before he shared his lenses with us. To me, that is the single most important function of travel: the ability to see home through new eyes, to evaluate the common from an angle we’d never considered. Instead of looking at the world through our cultural telescope, we begin to see the world like a marble at the end of a kaleidoscope. Same place. Entirely different view.

What about you? Why do you travel? What have you noticed upon coming home?

Original article can be found here: Why do you go away?