I hadn't traveled with the intention of learning about anything except myself. And the real point of all this travel was not what I had come to believe or disbelieve about the wider world, but what I had learned about myself.
When I look back on my travels, I see an almost obsessive desire for experiences that would increase my self-awareness. I needed new experiences to keep shaking myself up.
From my parents I learned to perceive new experiences as fun and invigorating, and not as frightening.
I see my travels as a strategy for solving problems...Whenever things got bad, whenever my life really wasn't working, I'd get on a plane and go far away. Not to escape my problems so much as to get perspective...this strategy worked. I returned to my life with a new sense of balance...to get to the point, to stop spinning my wheels, to know what I wanted to do and how...focused and effective...because I had gone away and found out something about myself. Something I needed to know.
My own sense is that the acquisition of self-knowledge has been made more difficult by the modern world...The natural world, the traditional source of self-awareness, is increasingly absent...Cut off from direct experience, cut off from our own feelings and ...sensations, we...adopt a viewpoint or perspective that is handed to us, and is not our own.
Unaccustomed to direct experience, we can come to fear it. We don't want to read a book or see a museum show until we've read the reviews so that we know what to think. We lose the confidence to perceive for ourselves. We want to know the meaning of an experience before we have it.
I liked to travel, because it got me out of my routines and my familiar patterns. The more traveling I did...kept adding things I liked to have...traveling became a lot less fun...loaded down with all this stuff that I felt I had to take...made a new routine instead of escaping...I wasn't getting away...I decided I would...carry nothing...on the plane in a state of panic - none of my familiar stuff! What was I going to do?...read the magazines that were on the plane. I talked to people. I stared out the window. I thought about things. It turned out I didn't need any of that stuff I thought I needed...I felt a lot more alive without it.
[excerpt story quoted in post linked
here]
Sometimes it's better just to sit and watch. It's surprising what you can learn that way.
From my point of view, these scientists are exactly like the New Guinea tribesmen who refuse to believe the metal birds in the sky contain people. How can you argue with them? Unless they're willing to go to the airport and see for themselves, no discussion is really possible. And, of course, if they do go to the airport, no discussion is necessary. So, in the end, find out for yourself.
I've come to take a rather simple-minded view of all this. There's a natural human resistance to change. We all fall into patterns and habits that eventually constrict our lives, but which we have difficulty breaking anyway. Rilke described the problem in this simple way: "Whoever you are: some evening take a step out of your bouse, which you know so well. Enormous space is near."