As writer Kevin Kelly said, “Travel is still the most intense mode of learning.” I spent a week with cobblestones, castles, museums, patchwork-quilt green fields, scones and cream, pots of tea, and the warm laughter of relatives from another land.
And it reminded me of who I am.
Because when you travel, you can’t help but be in the moment. That elusive moment that slips away so easily in the multi-tasking world of everyday life.
Rather than grabbing something to eat, you savour new tastes. Instead of zoning out as you trek your regular path, you look in awe down lanes and at the flash of scenery out train windows. You sip your drink and relish each bite.
You are truly alive.
But in the end, it’s not the external entities that make a life. It’s the hollow spots that we fill with living.
As Lao Tzu writes in Tao Te Ching, “We join spokes together in a wheel, but it is the centre hole that makes the wagon move. We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want. We hammer wood for a house, but it is the inner space that makes it livable. We work with being, but non-being is what we use.”
How can we make space in our day to truly embrace the magic of our lives? How can we turn each moment into an adventure to remember? We may search the world but the treasure lies in our own backyard.