The Element of Understanding We are Always Traveling and Its Hope for Adapting to New Places, Spaces and Faces

Our lives can become topsy turvy in a minute.

See if you recognize this story….

One moment you are in your house, happy and safe with your Aunt and Uncle, the next moment, your house has been whisked to a magical land and the only way for you to get back home is to travel the Yellow Brick Road to meet the Wizard.

Or how about this one?....

One moment you are an unloved orphan living in a cupboard under a staircase in your aunt's house, the next you are attending a school for wizards where you soon discover you are destined for great things.

Or how about this one?

One moment you are attending Reed College in Oregon, the next you are in India studying Buddhism, the next you are in your family's garage developing a ground-breaking computer with a high school buddy.

Even if such earth-shaking events do not describe our lives, the reality is we are always traveling.

And - to borrow a phrase written by my friend Meera for an advertising campaign, “no two moments in our lives are ever the same.”

We open the papers everyday (or swipe our cell phone to “Play Newstand”), and we see that the world is different from what it was a year ago, maybe even a few months ago.

Bruce has become Caitlyn; gay marriage has become legal in all states; and Afrezza, a new inhalable form of insulin has hit the market; and the world has changed for all of us.

Life is like that.

We were at one point.

Now we have all traveled from that point to the present point.

And we will keep traveling.

We can wish we were not part of some journeys, but we are.

This is our new reality – I say our new reality - because we all live on the same planet – Planet Earth.

Throughout our lives, we will have to get used to new places and spaces and faces.

Some of us will see a vast number of places and spaces and faces.

If we have been raised in an armed forces family, a diplomatic family, or a missionary family, we will have moved many times.

And then there will be those who have been on the move purely out of choice.

Throughout history, people have been motivated to travel for one reason or another.

One reason is faith.

It was a desire to practice their faith that brought the Pilgrims to America.

It is an impetus to do good works, or share what they have learned, that make many holy or spiritual men and women, take to the road.

Guru Nanak, founder of Sikhism, began his 5 Udasis (journeys), because he was moved by the plight of the people; and wanted to tell them “the real message of God.”

And here is what Ibn Battua, regarded as the world’s most traveled person in history, said about the start of his journey from Morocco to Mecca (a journey that would take him to many places, and from which he would return only after 24 years):

“I set out alone, having neither fellow-traveler in whose companionship I might find cheer, nor caravan whose part I might join, but swayed by an overmastering impulse within me and a desire long-cherished in my bosom to visit these illustrious sanctuaries. So I braced my resolution to quit my dear ones, female and male, and forsook my home as birds forsake their nests. My parents being yet in the bonds of life, it weighed sorely upon me to part from them, and both they and I were afflicted with sorrow at this separation.”

Another reason people travel is to discover new places.

This is true of the great explorers like Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan, as well as today’s vacationers.

Yet another reason to travel is to escape tyranny, or danger.

People have made daring journeys to do that.

My post, The Element of Independence And Its Hope for Becoming All We Are Meant To Be, tells the stories of two such journeys, one made by a friend of mine.

And finally, people travel for opportunity - it is the reason why many people are in America.

Whether we travel to a new land to stay awhile, or to put down roots, we will need to adapt – to the roads, to the weather, to the food, to the culture.

The earliest American immigrants, the Pilgrims, had to learn to hunt turkey and grow corn.

Likewise, people moving from India to America have to learn to adapt to many different things -  to driving on the right side of the road, to using the car horn sparingly, to operating automatic cars, to moving to the left when one hears a cop car, or an ambulance.

Gestures are different in different countries, and there are different standards for communication, and we have to adapt to that as well.

In my first 3 years in the US, I was told off, because I interrupted people while they were talking (you just don’t do that in America), or did not wait behind the line at banks and store check-outs, for the customer ahead of me to get done, before going up to the counter.

In America, you don't describe someone in terms of a physical defect.  I had to learn to stop saying, “oh, she's the girl with the limp” and such, a habit picked up from India, where people did this with impunity back when I lived there.

Seen in this respect, moving to a different country seems like hard work - we have to make ourselves over.

But travel can turn from an option into a necessity in a heartbeat, and we must be prepared to make the adjustments required.

Not just as individuals, but as a community as well.

It is rare for any community to remain in the same geographical location for centuries, leave alone, thousands of years.

The Aborigines of Australia are fascinating in this respect. They have been in Australia for over 75,000 years.

Otherwise, most communities will have stories of migration to tell, maybe even multiple migrations.

The Mangalorean Catholic community – to which I belong, for instance – has a migration story to tell, and you can read it here.

Whether travel is an itch we have to scratch, or a necessity, our lives are enriched by it.

The reason why we like Star Wars, and Star Trek, and Avatar, is because we have a secret yearning to see new places and spaces and faces, even if only from a theater seat, or a living room couch.

As Anais Nin said, “We travel, some of us forever, to seek other places, other lives, other souls.”

Tim Cahill says, “A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.”

Indeed, if I left some good friends back in India, I cherish all the friends I have made in America.

I wrote My United States of Friendship series to celebrate these friends. You can read about a few of them here, here, and here.

Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world. Gustave Flaubert said that, I didn’t, but it’s true.  Every time we go to a new place, we see how limited our world was, before we made that journey.

When I was 24, I moved from Bangalore to Chennai.  Soon after, I met someone (who later was to become my husband), who was into car racing and rallying, rock music and export import licensing. None of this had been a part of my life prior to meeting him.  My world was immediately expanded.

Is travel best enjoyed in company?

Not necessarily, so.

 “The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.”  said Henry David Thoreau.

Indeed, I have met many people who do not mind traveling alone, and who even recommend it.

In January of this year, Tanita traveled to England and India on her own.  During her stay in England, she explored London - and some of the neighboring tourist sites, on her own.  She told me it was cool to be able to do what she wanted, when she wanted.

Travel expands our horizons – that is what it is meant for.

When we travel, we have to expect the unexpected.

When I was in my early 20’s, I went on a trip to Mysore with a friend.

On our way back, a terrible thing happened to us, as we were boarding the train back to Bangalore.

We were pick-pocketed - and the wallet containing our train tickets, and our remaining money, was gone.

In those days, we didn't have cell-phones.

There was not much we could do in such a situation.

We decided to board the train without tickets.

Half-way to Bangalore, the ticket collector came round.

We tried to explain to him what had happened, but he ordered us off the train at the next station.

We got off the train at the next station, and I immediately burst into tears.

Someone felt sorry for us, and took us to the station superintendent, so we could explain our plight.

He said we had been very foolish to get on the train without tickets, but there was something we could do. “Do you have anything of value?”, he asked us.  “If you do, we can take you to a pawnshop. You can pawn that for money, and you can buy your tickets from here to Bangalore.”

My friend had an expensive watch.

We pawned that, and had enough money for our fare back home.

The next day, we bused back to that town to collect the watch from the pawnshop.

It was quite an experience.

Ever since that day, I made it a point to travel in my oldest, most worn-out clothes, whenever I took a train or bus in India anywhere, and I was extremely vigilant about my purse and other belongings.

As John Steinbeck said, “A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.”

Travel is about letting go of habit, routines, and the things we are accustomed to.

We have to go with the flow; we have to give ourselves to the experience.

As James Michener said, “If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay at home.”

What is the point of traveling, if we are not going to allow ourselves to experience other cultures?

Is it just to copycat people and say “I went to so and so place this summer”?

The great thing about our increasingly connected world, is that we can travel, without ever packing our bags.

We can taste the food of different countries, right where we are.

Since coming to America, I have enjoyed discovering and tasting different cuisines.

Yes, we can travel through food.

Each of the friends in my United States of Friendship series introduced me to a different kind of food, all of which I have to come to relish and delight in.

We can also travel through our imaginations.

When we travel through our imaginations, we can travel to all the countries of the world, and we can travel anywhere in the galaxy.

We can also travel anywhere in time.

We can go backwards and forwards, to any period of time.

My friend Ajay’s three part Oh Bangalore series travels backwards and forwards through time, capturing Bangalore’s past, Bangalore's present and Bangalore's future.  It is an amazing read, and will be enjoyed by visitors to Bangalore, and people to whom Bangalore is home, alike.

Period literature - or theater - transports us back in time. 

I am currently watching Downton Abbey on Amazon Prime, and through watching it, I am transported back 100 years to turn of the century England, or “Bertie Wooster time”.

Speaking of Bertie Wooster, you can travel back to Bertie Wooster time right on this blog. “The Wonderful World of P.G. Wodehouse” is your ticket.

We travel back in time through our memories too.

Ajay, who penned both the Oh Bangalore series, and The Wonderful World of P.G. Wodehouse, relied on his memory to create “A Short Stint in Advertising”, a trip down Memory Lane for MAAites.

And I traveled back in time, to write the post, “The Nightdress Brigade”, which is about a youthful escapade, featuring my sister Rosie and myself.

We can travel through different languages as well.

Every language, has its own nuances.

I was fascinated when I first learned that Russians call their children by different diminutives of their name, depending on what they are addressing their child for.  Maria will be Masha when the child is young, and become Mashinka when the child is being scolded.

When I was writing my post The Element of Not Wanting Contradictory Things, I discovered that different cultures have different versions of the phrase “You Can’t Have Your Cake and Eat It Too”.

One way or another, we are always traveling.

And the longer we live, the more we will have traveled.

If not physically, we will have traveled spiritually, intellectually and emotionally.

Accept that you will be traveling all your life, and you will begin to enjoy new places, spaces and faces.

Which is the way things were meant to be.  Yeah!

As always, thanks for reading and have a great day and week….M…..a Pearl-Seeker like you.  Thanks to Ajay, David, and Rosie for their comments and compliments on my last post, and thanks to the rest of you for your likes, pins and votes.  Much appreciated!