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Sunday, November 3

The Travelers and The Untraveled

This really strange thing happens to you when you step outside the familiar world that you walk in daily, and step into the unfamiliar. You suddenly allow changes and differences into your reality that you don’t normally have need for, or experience of.

Going to another country is like opening super-stellar portals in your brain and linking to humanity through gravitational pull and magnetic illumination. Which is to say it’s really hard to describe how amazing it is, and how much you learn through doing it. -It’s life changing.


Where I live there are many people who have not traveled around this world, have not met different people on different turf, they don’t know what it feels and smells like to be in France, Turkey, Mexico, Wales, or anywhere.

These people are missing out on levels of life that they can’t even imagine. We can watch movies, we can hear music, but without actually traveling around and experiencing people and culture, you will remain untravelled, and therefore partially empty with parts of your mind staying closed.

Thing is, this giant land mass of country I live in doesn’t change from state to state the way the smaller area of Europe changes from country to country, so traveling around the US, really is NOT the same.

I had a unique experience recently. I stumbled upon a couple of lovely women on the internet doing a little tour of the US. Stephanie and Jillian (“Bonobonobonobo”) are in the process of visiting 8 cities in 7 weeks, as they move from home to home doing concert/conversations with a theme of “our love is what we make of it”. Their idea is they want to expand their perspective by directly listening to people speak on the subjects they are writing songs about. The concept is super clever, and sounds a thoroughly fun and an enlightening way to grow, learn, & live. I invited them to come to my house this last week since they were in the area, so I got to “take part” in a concert/conversation. (Which by the way was TOTALLY COOL.)

One of the things that struck me was that these two lovely souls are some of the “Travelers” not part of the “Untraveled”. An open-mindedness comes with those wanting to experience others, which is the path I took. This open-mindedness is something I’m so keen to experience, I now recognize it very easily in people, and so I am drawn to the fellow Travelers of the world.

Another thing I’ve noticed about the Travelers is the lack of preaching “truth” or “right-ness”, they tend not to be so insistent on having a religion, or walking a set path, holding fast to any “rods”. They don’t worry about doing as they are told, but more concerned with learning as they live loving. A mouthful, but very accurate: I also want to learn as I live loving… I’m not going to care about holding onto any rod either, there are many lessons to be learned in the fields either side of the path where the rod is located. And many beautiful people also exploring these fields. These are the Travelers, and I am among them.

2 comments:

  1. Well you know, if I had never travelled, I'd have never met you! I have travelled since I was 6. Then when I left school again, I took the bull by the horns and packed up my rucksack and left. It has led me to places that I have loved, places where I feel at home. Peaceful and content. Be it sitting on a beach in L.A, playing golf in Vegas, horseback riding at sunset in Antigua, shopping in the middle of a bazaar in Cairo or walking in green fields and mountains of Ireland. Whatever about people having the desire to travel but not the funds, it's the ones who seem 'happy' with seeing or staying in the small part of this enormous world that they call home, I can't work out. In Ireland it's like growing up in a small village, marrying somebody from that village and buying a house in that little village and never seeing the rest of the world. My family are lovers of travel and the independence and knowledge that it brings. We don't push it on others. We prefer to paint our own canvas of memories in our hearts and our heads. Stopping every now and then to take a look at where we have been and where we want to go next. Love you Miss Nat!

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    1. Thank you for sharing Ali! I always love to hear your perspective. You are one of my favorite Travellers, and one that has always been so genuine. I appreciate your insight, your life, and your dear friendship.
      Love you toooo Miss Ali.

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