What are the benefits from traveling?

Helped me see the world from other people’s perspective.

Best of all has been to speak to people in many countries and environments and find you have things in common. So much negative goes on between governments, but person to person, people are pretty great. You begin to feel you know something about the people of the world and aren’t limited to experiences only in your community.

I could write a book responding to this question. I have lived in seven different countries on four continents. I have visited many others. I adore travel.

My family drove to many places around the US when I was growing up in the South, so I got to see a many different terrains and experience different tastes and sights. I loved it all. I remember our trip to California and Disneyland. There was one to Yellowstone National Park, and we made a trip to Washington, DC, as well. As part of different groups in high school, I went to Chicago, Nashville, Washington, DC again, Philadelphia, and New York City.

I loved the regional food, the smells of the mountains versus the plains, and the sights that were so vastly different.

I lived overseas for much of my formative young adulthood, and it radically altered my psyche. Japan gave me a appreciation for stability above all else. I learned about the dissolution of individual ego through the practice of Buddhism. I gained an appreciation of beauty in utility.

Each country opened a part of my soul that I didn’t know existed. I am a richer being for having lived in such vastly different places: Japan, England, France, Singapore, Thailand, Australia, and the US.

And now, I live in Polynesia. It’s part of the United States, but so much is different here. Family relations often trump individual ideas. When strangers meet, it’s not unusual to hear “Who’s your family?” early in the conversation. The food is good, and the language is a real mixture that is hard to describe.

I am blessed.

One important lesson that travel can teach us, if we’re open to it, is how much of what we think of as normal, natural, and right is really culturally based. In another culture, something we might see as strange is just as normal as what seems normal to us. This helps us learn the crucial distinction between “different” and “wrong.”

There’s an awfully large number of people in the U.S. who really need a good lesson in seeing how much of what they take for granted is not ordained by God and nature. It’s nothing more than just what they were brought up to. I’m sure the same goes for a great many people in other cultures as well.

If we go out there with a rigid, closed mind, though, we won’t get much more out of travel than entertainment and a collection of mass-produced souvenirs.

It opens the mind, adds to ones frames of reference it is important to travel. The mind can travel through books and the thoughts of others, but they remain that, the thoughts of others.

Some of the most positive people I’ve met were fellow travellers that I crossed paths with. Heck, I even “met a girl” this way. And the stories these people have… life “on the trail” can be so much fun, given the right attitude ;-) I love travelling, just lack the means to do so most of the time… (army, here I come)

In Mexico, Montezuma’s Revenge!

Other than that, education. Learn about culture and geography and see beautiful places. Learn about people. Understand the world better. There’s nothing like seeing something in person to gain a greater understanding of it. You can’t learn a lot of things from books.

Well in travelling, you’ll gain experienced, excitement and enjoyment. You get to explore the amazing places and at the same time you’ll have fun of doing it.