The Above Picture was taken Back in Sweden. I had seen these flowers for a while, but I noticed them after I had seen them in Japan. See here
Jacqueranda, San Francisco, Palo Alto, 2007
How many times do we wish we could be some where else? The focus on travel these days is amazing. Every one talks about it. They use Facebook as their personal photo album and discuss travel as some sort of feat. In my experience, I do not find the well travelled less biased or more interesting or kinder or more reliable. They are just that 'more travelled'. I have had deep conversations with people who never left the town they grew up in. These people have brought me wisdom of their cultures and made me seen the world from their perspective.
Is it a reflection of who I am then? Possibly.
I seek a certain kind of conversation and I am able to engage in it. Also, being on my own helps. Meaning, I do have family but they are scattered. I do have friends, but there is no one checking or in touch regularly, that is sad, but also allows a freedom. That freedom has been translated into these meaningful conversations. And I have made friends from unlikely quarters. I have friends from all age groups and many nationalities and religions.
However, even I have not been exempt from taking my own surroundings for granted.
For example, while Frangipanis grow in India, and even in Delhi, I really did not notice them until I went to Fiji.
The same with flowers like the bird of paradise. I remember staring at them in Fiji, the first time I saw them there, as if that was the first time I had seen them. But I had seen them before, or had been around them before. But not until I was in an unfamiliar territory, did I notice them.
Then, I noticed them everywhere. Especially, when the year after I travelled through Europe, I saw them in major hotel lobbies, wondering how much money they were paying for having these flowers transported.
Similarly, the flower above, I did not pay attention to until in Japan. Only to see them in my neighbourhood, in Sweden.
What am I trying to say, that when we travel, our senses and lenses of perception sort of become clear and unbiased, only because we are in unfamiliar territory, and are obligated to notice things.
It could be the other way around as well, you know that we are too caught up in something and do not notice anything. For example, in business trips or conferences, which happens. Or for someone like me who travels a lot. But, in reality, I pay more attention. Simply because I know the limits of work, I know there are a certain hours and in others I relax.
I also keep a day or two after the conference to just unwind.
But the truth is that I notice. Or I would not be a writer. I have always noticed flowers and trees and the color of the sky etc.
But even I, have been a prey to 'being blind to our surroundings' many times. Such that I needed to leave a place to notice something. Even Jacqueranda, which grows in India, but I first noticed in Botswana, and then when I was in San Francisco, I just pointed at it right away!!
So, I guess, travel is good for that reason, (just as it is good for us to expose ourselves to new situations)--to put us into the unfamiliar, so that we might sharpen our own perceptions, we might notice the things we ignored, we might allow more into our own sphere of recognition. We might improve as people.
But, most of the times that does not happen with travellers. For every traveller is not born with 'gene' to learn and grow.
Some travellers might know about about plants and trees, but might not want to incorporate new ideas, not want to question their own ways of thinking, and not want to interact with those who think differently from them.
In my experience, with distance and understanding the world, I have loved India more and more. With all the questions I have of the US and in someways I find it socially reprehensible, I have respected its simplicity, and a desire to reinvent itself. While I had questioned the intellectual desert in Fiji, I miss its understanding of itself through music, meke, kava, and sunshine. Fiji's life philosophy lived in those aspects of daily lived experience--along with a hearty laughter.
Yes, I can say that because I have considered all these countries home--for several years.
Often times, it is important for us to leave home, to realize how much wealth, and knowledge is to be found the place where we are bound by our bodies and responsibilities and connections.
And that leaving home does not need to leave country or even town, that could be simply going for a long walk on a street that we have not walked through, in meditation, when not a single thought touches us, but we are absorbed in noticing everything around us.
Try it, and come back and see every wall, every shelf in your own place with a new eye. Every spoon and every fork then becomes an aid, every shelf a support, and each book a connection to the beyond, as we look at carnations standing ,in a glass vase, that were grown three states away!!
