Travel doesn’t just show you new places. It shows you your own place from the outside.
REFLECTION
WHAT THIS MEANS
Going somewhere else is only half of what a trip does. The other half happens on the way back, when things you assumed were just how life works turn out to be local: the food, the hours people keep, what counts as rude. It is hard to see the water you grew up in until you have been out of it for a while.
A day trip is enough if you pay attention coming home. Note one thing about your own town that looked strange after being away, and ask somebody who grew up elsewhere what they noticed first.
A QUESTION TO SIT WITH
What looked different about home after you came back?
MORE IN MEANING & PERSPECTIVE
- Every plane overhead is full of people going to weddings, funerals, new jobs and old homes.
- When you wish on a shooting star, you’re wishing on a grain of space dust. The wish was always yours to make happen.
- The bus rides, the late shifts, the cheap noodles. You’ll probably tell those stories with a weird kind of pride later.
Free, with nothing to buy inside it.