The Process of Travelling

    I was once told that travelers are thought-provokers; that they are people—normal people looking for sense in this obscure world. The journey of travelling is a way for them to discriminate what to ask and what not to ask. In a sense, the purpose of travelling is the same as asking a question: may you be sure of where you wanted to go or is wandering around with no destination in mind, you are nevertheless wandering around.

Travelling, for me, equates to precious time for self-discovery. I read before that people always want to discover things; may it be of outer space or the vast oceans, we all want to know the most of anything. However, we get too enthusiastic with worldly treks that we forget that the human mind is more undiscovered than many parts of the universe.

Being a student of a prestigious school had its various kinds of hardships on different types of students. The stress of not being able to perform well, the pressure of not being able to meet expectations and the fear of miserably failing do make students go aloof and temporarily astray at times. While students receive breaks and breathers, the strain academic challenges put on them isn't that hard to get by with just little pauses especially for students of a fragile age.

This semester break, I got to travel a lot. I went to a number of apparently diverse places that gave me plenty of time to meditate and reflect. The different destinations I traveled to all served a purpose on searching for my zen. The calming scenery of rivers and forests paved way to my getting a clear mind and a liberal thinking; the busy streets of the cities gave me a rational and objective guidance; and the nostalgia given to me by my hometown brought me back to a clear direction towards my personal missions— all the while being with my close friends and family motivated me into healing.

Travelling is not a direct solution to problems but it helps one to discover the possible course of actions towards gaining your stability. The stress I received from personal and academic problems, however, became more manageable afterwards.

The journey of self-reflecting is indeed like a pilgrimage, and might take a lot of your time as a person looking for his way around the insanely fast world. What's so big about this journey is you don't know where your destination is nor do you even know if you have one, but we partake in them notwithstanding any hurdles one can encounter. Sometimes, it's because we have no choice but most of the time, it is because we can never be satisfied with just being us.

And so, we want to wander around because travelling is a question yet a process all the same. Destinations are possible solutions, and the travel includes steps one need to partake in to get closer to an answer.

To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.

- Robert Stevenson