If you've traveled a bit, you've probably racked up a nice list of things learned just by the experience of the travel itself. I know I have. As someone who loves learning, I can honestly say I'm looking forward to what I'll learn on this upcoming journey.
Woke up early this morning...ok, earlier than usual:)...and had a few moments of solitude with my coffee to think about things I learned in previous travels.
-- there are things that exist in parts of the world that are completely unknown and foreign. This doesn't mean they aren't real or that they are somehow "less than". It just means you haven't experienced it before and that you are, quite literally, ignorant. When I was in Brasil one summer, I witnessed a man who was absolutely out of his mind and, before I knew otherwise, I would have described him as possessed. What proceeded to happen was an exorcism -- which, even 20 years later is hard for me to describe. But, I will tell you now as I told people then -- I saw it and felt it personally and the man I saw walk in was not the same man I saw walk out. It's not hyperbole to say that this encounter changed my life.
There is poverty and intense suffering the likes of which you cannot grasp for almost everyone who lives in the United States. There are diseases and afflictions that cannot be overcome. There are things that are so insanely unfair that your heart will break in a split second upon seeing it-- in that very moment you realize that if the person/place/thing were merely located elsewhere, everything would be different. I recall walking in a large, open market sort of area of Sao Paulo and seeing a large woman sitting on the ground holding an umbrella. Her right leg was so incredibly swollen -- the skin stretched so thin -- that I couldn't not stare and I just knew it would burst open as I watched. For more than 20 years, I've remembered her. I think about what was going on with her leg. Why she couldn't see a doctor. How her life would be different if she just lived somewhere else. Where was her family? Could she walk? How many things do I take for granted that are an actual advantage -- like which country i was born in. That wasn't my choice or my doing but it benefits me in ways I see and ways I do not see.
You will encounter people who do not like you because you aren't like them -- and when you realize how often YOU do that too, you will be crushed. (or you should be.) I was sitting alongside the Seine one day, quietly eating some lunch I had brought along in my pack. A policeman came up and was yelling at me. I couldn't tell why because I didn't speak a lick of French. I could tell he didn't want me there and I quickly moved along. I saw a shop owner nearby and I made my way over to try my luck at them speaking English. They did. I asked what I had done wrong. He said that I couldn't sit along the river's edge. Really? I was surprised. It was beautiful there -- quiet and still. Peaceful. A perfect place to sit and eat lunch. Why not, I asked. "Because you're American. You'll ruin it." Oh. Ouch.
There are places so extraordinary and beautiful that you will cry in public and not care. You might also sing out loud in public and not care. You aren't the you that you normally are. And you won't ever want to be that you again. You know that even if you snapped 1000 pictures, you won't be able to capture it correctly. You wish it could be bottled up and pulled back out later to be remembered in all its exquisite detail...and you know it cannot. You simultaneously want to tell everyone all about it and also hold it tight and keep it a secret...just in case saying it out loud makes it unreal. I felt this way so often in Iceland that it almost became entirely overwhelming.
People are people everywhere and yet the people you meet in other places will challenge you and stretch you and change you in all the good ways. I met a man in Brasil who was so incredibly poor -- living in a favela -- and he offered me his shirt (literally the shirt off his back). I cannot even recall why but I can recall the shock of someone giving me one of the very few things they owned in this world for nothing in return. I think about the children I've met in Honduras who want so badly to learn and go to school. They aren't asking for physical possessions or the "typical" wants of children in the US. The joy on their faces when we give them simple things like toothbrushes or a cheap toy car or plastic doll is radiant. 2 years ago, we saw little boys playing soccer with garbage from the dump, crumbled up into sort of a ball. As we prepared to leave, one little curly haired girl, about 3, started crying because she was the last one and we ran out of things to pass out and she didn't get anything. Her pain was palpable and it crushed my husband. He ran around looking for anything at all to give her. Someone finally tore a single page out of someone else's coloring book and found a marker to give her. She beamed with gratitude. Oh my heart.
You'll learn things about yourself that you might not otherwise know. From my journeys to Iceland and down through Big Bend National Park with my brother, I learned that I don't like to be stuck or feel like I'll get trapped somewhere that I cannot get out of. Now, perhaps you read that and think, well, who does!?!?! But, I didn't realize this at all about myself until coming face to face with a few incidents that sent my pulse racing and caused immediate physical responses, including but not limited to actually yelling, "I don't want to get stuck here and not be able to get away!" When talking through it later with my brother, I finally realized the depth of of all it -- I don't like the idea of being "stuck", whether physically, spiritually, romantically...it was such a huge moment for me and explained so many moves, marriages, changes...and then my brother goes, "Well, duh." This also shocked me -- he already knew that? "Well, yeah." Huh.
I could continue to list things I've learned. Maybe I will again later. For now, I look forward to what's to come.
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