How does travel function as a tool for self-discovery? Explain with the examples from Pico Iyer’s essay “Why We Travel?”
- ‘Why we travel’ is an essay consisting of Pico Iyer’s reflections on the many motives and lessons of traveling. Quoting George Santayana, the writer says that we travel to escape the mundane routine that life enforces on us, to include excitement and exhilaration, and be energized and rejuvenated in the process. The author states that the notion that new perspectives will open up by travel can be applied to one’s home culture and foreign ones. As we become representatives of our culture when we travel, we begin to appreciate our own home because we see it through the eyes of a foreigner. Hence through mutual cultural exchange, travel becomes a celebration of both cultures (i.e.) our own and foreign. While travel shows have the potential to show us ordinarily ignore aspects of our world in a completely different light, it also has the immense potential to show us parts of ourselves that we might be unaware of. This process of self-exploration and discovery is one of the greatest gifts that travel has to offer us. As our minds are cluttered by the many engagements of our daily routine, travel provides us with the space to unwind and realize the hidden aspects of our minds. (Example: illustrations of Tibet, Thailand, and Iceland) We also have specific markers of identity like our nationality, our religion, caste, or profession that are immaterial when we travel.
Hence, along with the space and opportunity of self-discovery, we are also simplified in many ways. We are freed of the inessential labels that we otherwise carry and adhere to. Thus travel allows us to be the best versions of ourselves or be a space for false identities.
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