Inspiring a Love for the Strange and New.

By Melody Green

In the 20^th and now 21^st centuries ordinary men and women have travelled more often and to further distances than ever before. And while moon travel was consider phantasmagorical in my grandparents’ time, my children will probably travel there in the same way we go across the world!

So why do we travel?

What pushes us to explore outside of ourselves and what are we searching for?

I think one of our strongest motivators to travel is to move us out of the familiar because over time and repetition environments become so boring to us. They are the background to the road most travelled – in other words, a rut.

We long for something new – and the stranger and more unusual that ‘new’ is - the better able we are to see ourselves.

For most people seeing the strange and new is enough – a holiday will do that for us. Few really enjoy the other form of “strange and new”, the one called emigration because for that we have to immerse ourselves in the strange and new for a long time – maybe having to give up our old and familiar in the process – and that which we give up invariably becomes that which we yearn for.

Some years ago I taught English as Second Language (ESL) and I was struck by how much the people I met yearned for the familiar even when the familiar was war-torn poverty. They could accept that their lives were different and better living in Australia, but they missed family, friends and the smells and tastes of home. At first I found this strange but it is to do with this sense of familiar (even the negative familiar has an ability to draw us) because in the knowing of the familiar we are lulled into a sense of security that the “strange and new” cannot deliver. Over time the “strange and new” becomes our new “familiar” and the old recedes to a yearning spot in the heart. This is one of the reasons that immigrants feel torn between two countries. They never quite feel right in their current place, nor can they fit into their old life.

Most of us that travel to the “strange and new” and love it for the adventure it is. It is an opportunity to learn new things; to stretch our understanding of the world we live in, to walk in someone else’s moccasins, eat their food, smell their air and learn from their cultures, and in this we are given the most amazing gift. It is surprisingly the gift of self. As we immerse ourselves in the other, the “strange and new”, we have the opportunity to grow as a human being and this brings us back to the familiar changed. We can view what we know with fresh and appreciative eyes and our familiar can be seen as the blessing it is, which in turn inspires up to venture out to try again the “strange and new”. These cycles like the in and out breath are how we grow in all things. Now isn’t the universe magical?

Blessings of travel and peace,

Melody

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