The Gifts of Travel - The Wise World Traveler: Becoming a Part of All that You Meet - page 2

1. The Gifts of Travel
I am a part of all that I have met.
—Lord Alfred Tennyson, “Ulysses”
The American College Dictionary defines travel in less than a half-dozen words. The core
definition is simple: to go from place to place. The Oxford English Dictionary , which, in
the words of Simon Winchester, tells us “the meaning of everything,” uses several hundred
words to define travel. But the full meaning of travel eludes even the magisterial OED .
Travel, particularly global travel, is more than a journey, much more. It is an experience
of sights, sounds, and emotions. It is an act of discovery in which travelers learn about
themselves, other people, and the world. As when the English Romantic poet John Keats
says, “Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, / And many goodly states and kingdoms
seen,” [6] the wise reader knows that the realms of gold and goodly states are really meta-
phors for the wealth of ideas and memories that travelers, particularly global travelers, take
from their journeys. They are in essence the raison d'être, or ultimate reason, for travel
abroad.
The wise traveler also knows that travel is addictive. The happier the travel experience,
the greater the yearning to travel again, to store in one's memory new ideas and experiences.
Tennyson's Ulysses speaks for us all:
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move. [7]
THE GIFT OF LANGUAGE
Few things please the wise traveler more than discovering that each journey has many layers
of experience, that each experience can lead to greater knowledge, and that every layer and
level of knowledge connect to an expanding web of information and ideas. Consider, for
example, language. Language is the principal method of human communication. It is usu-
ally in spoken form although writing is considered communication as well. But like travel,
the idea of language extends far beyond a dictionary's definition. Language is a universe of
shared meanings and memories—of historic struggles and of shared triumphs and defeats.
Language is thus a principal component and shaper of a country's culture.
Most strangers in a foreign country know that language is a cornerstone of culture.
These visitors observe how people of the local culture easily and comfortably communicate
through the spoken word, often accompanied by various gestures perfectly understood by
fellow citizens, however mysterious to outsiders. Many travelers, for example, have ob-