Travel We Must!

I've had the good fortune to travel here lately. Actually, throughout my adult life, I've been really blessed to go places and do things that I didn't even have the room to dream about when I was growing up.

I'm convinced that we all need to travel.  And we need to travel to places and truly experience those places.  Meet and get to know the people. 

We need to see new places.  Try new things.  Eat different food.  Listen to different music.

We need to discover how somebody else does things.  We might just find a better way to do what we do.

When I was a high school junior, we won the football state championship.  It was a big deal in my little town. The community actually raised money and sent the whole team to see Tennessee and Florida play in the Gator Bowl. 

Most of the players on the team had never been out of the state of Tennessee.  One player, my age, had never been outside of our home county. 

So we find ourselves in a budget motel in downtown Jacksonville where we were told to stay off the streets because it was the big city and so it was dangerous and all.

That didn't stop us.

One boy discovered liquor that trip--a discovery that would haunt him the rest of his life.  A few went looking (unsuccessfully) for girls.  Most just wandered the streets.

In some small way, we all learned that there was another world out there.  A world outside of our tiny burg of three red lights and two grocery stores.

Yes, travel.  Get out of your comfort zone.  See new things and experience different cultures.  It will be good for you.   

I just got back from a trip this week.  It was all that and more.  I had even been reluctant to leave my comfortable little world for a week.  I like my life.

But seeing new things and new places teaches us that the world is a big place.  It gives us perspective.  It lets us know in no uncertain terms that the world does not revolve around us.  That we have to live with others and find a way to make it all work.

Travel, put most simply, opens our eyes.  Opens our eyes to the beauty that lies in our own backdoor.  Opens our eyes to the value of collaboration with people sometimes very different from us.  It makes us more accepting of things that are different.  It opens our eyes to the possibilities of humanity.

In part of those recent travels, I crossed Oklahoma.  I saw people there, people of the Cherokee nation whose roots in this area--in the hills and valleys of east Tennessee--are far, far deeper than our own. 

People who were forcibly marched across this land to an area that was harsh and even barren, especially when you consider the mountains and rivers where they came from.  Certainly far from their home.

Yet, they have survived and have built a life and yes, a culture there.   That survivability, that uniqueness of the culture that has evolved, is something that we could all learn from.  While we will never be able to relate to what they've been through as a people, we can still learn from them.

But we've got to get out to where they are to even have that opportunity.  We must travel and not inside some monstrous ship or to a cookie-cutter hotel that happens to be on the beach.  We've got to get out there.