What is traveling? Flying on a plane? Eating foreign foods? Seeing the Tour Eiffel, Macchu Picchu, or sitting on a white sand beach while light blue waters lap your feet? Is it flying 13 hours to Tokyo on a weekend business trip? Alone? Is it going to Disneyworld wit the kids? Or is it camping in the outback? How about getting from Hollywood to Venice beach on the bus? Or is it going to visit the in-laws in Wisconsin, or to the super Wal-Mart to get some things you don’t really need?
We all travel, in fact, some may argue that we are always traveling, all the time. We may not even have to leave our bed or our house. We travel when we dream, when we sleep, when we look out the window and daydream. We travel when we eat miso soup or pad thai out of a box at home. We even travel when we plug into the internet. Ask yourself where YOU were the last hour while you were surfing the web. It is all a virtual reality and virtual travel – no matter what we are doing or where our destination is.
In fact, as long as we have destinations, as long as we are trying to get somewhere, we are traveling. No wonder everyone is getting exhausted. Traveling is full of stress, catching buses or planes, finding meals, avoiding weather, always trying to figure out how to get somewhere, or adapt to something new.
If perpetual motion is our condition – and it makes us weary, why not rest a while, and recover some of that energy. There are always more destinations, and more trips; you cannot complete them all in this lifetime – so why rush. We have nowhere to go. We are here – Enjoy it. Take time to drink that coffee in the morning, and start the day. What is the point if we don’t even taste our food, or know what we are saying to our companions? When we think about tomorrow today, we are time traveling. Instead of being here, we are daydreaming a virtual reality.
Step back for a moment, breath in the air; look around see what is happening. Maybe we can’t stop moving, traveling, but it sure is nice to check in once in a while, and if not stop time, at least slow it down.
