I have always understood travel as
giving oneself to a different place and letting the new place evokes a new self.
When I read Iyer’s article, where he said, “one of the subtle beauties of
travel is that it enables you to bring new eyes to the people you encounter,” I
nodded so hard. What travel means to a person is that wherever that person
goes, he is always new to the place. To the place he goes, meanwhile, he is new
as well. Thus a different perspective, looking with new eyes, is offered to
understand something that has long remained. However, while travelers bring new
eyes to the place and the people, as Iyer later wrote, people also have dreams
tender to the travelers. I, as a traveler to a foreign land, have experienced
how people wondered and expected what I should represent. Because I am from a
culturally different place, my life experience directly reflects the image of
my home. But because everyone has a different understanding or perspective in
where I was from, it was hard to answer all the questions arose. However, by
answering questions people have to me, some of them I would never think about
on my own, I am also finding out more and more about myself. One important
concept Iyer talked about is that a person does not have “labels” on him while traveling,
which gives him a new possibility of being who he is. For me, only when I left
where I have long been familiar with, I realized how I was unfamiliar with my
own self. Everything provided for me being gone, I then come to understand what
is my potential and what is my desire.
As Iyer wrote in his article, travel is
a “two-way transaction”: a chance to exchange oneself with a new environment.
Therefore, traveling, in my opinion, is growing: you give yourself to a place
as you go; thus you leave a space to discover who you can become.
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