Michelle Ricciardi wrote:
Iyer's essay captivated me from the first sentence down to
the last. I felt as though his words described what I have failed to tell to
all of the world when I talk about my passion for traveling. Having recently
traveled to Thailand, reading this essay reinforced the enlightenment about
life that I had felt after seeing the other side of the world. One of my
favorite quotes from this essay is when Iyer says "...the sovereign
freedom of traveling comes from the fact that it whirls you around and turns
you upside down, and stands everything you took for granted on its head. If a
diploma can famously be a passport (to a journey through hard realism), a
passport can be a diploma (for a crash course in cultural relativism).",
because traveling to foreign places truly changes you. In my case, I could
acknowledge the fact that I would never be the same even upon returning home. I
felt like I found my center, that seeing how different Thai culture was and opening
myself up to traditions and embracing their way of life made me learn about
myself so much that I felt more at peace with myself than ever before. You not
only learn more about culture than any textbook or newspaper, as Iyer states in
the beginning, but you learn about yourself.
Alex Franciosa noted:
Iyer talks about how travel is work, but we need to work to appreciate
things. He also talks about the idea
that some people will always grumble about how “things are all the same” or
“things are too different.” To be able to truly appreciate place, we have to
accept that things are different but that is what makes it worthwhile to
travel. Personally, I am interested in
seeing how things will be the same, how people will all show some of the same
aspects of humanity despite growing up in a completely different place. Iyer
talks about how tourists, once the initial biases are overlooked, can bring
different, beautiful points of view to something that the native people are
used to.
Iyer also discusses
how traveling makes us like children again.
We become surrounded by a language we don’t understand, and we have to
resort to simple phrases and expressing ourselves through our
surroundings. Travel makes us innocent;
we’re in an unknown world, exploring and discovering new things.
Imani Davis said:
Overall, Pico lyer’s essay “Why We Travel” speaks many
truths about the emotions, thought process and semi culture shock of traveling.
The essay opens by saying,
We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel,
next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more
about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what
little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe
whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become
young fools again — to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once
more”. (“Why We Travel)
The opening statements really got me to think about my past
traveling experiences. Now, I’m not new to traveling and it has become a
tradition in my family to travel to at least two new places every summer. We’ve
gone to Florida, Las Vegas, Aruba, Venezuela and my mother’s birthplace
Jamaica, just to name a few. And each place that I have traveled to I’ve gained
knowledge from, never wanted my stay to be over and most importantly fell in
love with. Once you travel out of your comfort zone its like a mind blowing
experience. Traveling to places where people talk differently and dress
different can be a little weird sometimes but when you think about it you’re
just as different to them and they are to you. At the end of the day it’s all
about embracing where you are and the people you will be around. Temporarily
this is your home and these people are not just strangers but your new
neighbors and somewhat tour guides. They learn from you just as much as you
learn from them. As Pico lyer as said,
“Abroad is the place where we stay up late, follow impulse
and find ourselves as wide open as when we are in love. We live without a past
or future, for a moment at least, and are ourselves up for grabs and open to
interpretation”. (“Why We Travel)
Traveling to unknown places is scary. Our Greece
experience will be scary but fun. We will be living in the present and
experiencing new and exciting things that only we can go back to our families
and friends and try to explain or put into words.
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