By Marilena Kagkaraki,
People say often travelling broadens your horizons. But, what does that mean exactly? It is one of those things you cannot comprehend if you have not actually been abroad, whether it is for traveling or living in another country. It is one of those things you have to experience to understand what people mean by saying “that place changed me or traveling opened my eyes to something new”.
Let me try and put into words how traveling can be a learning experience.
NEW SCENERIES IS THE START OF CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING
This is the most obvious one. Every country has different climate and landscapes. So, experiencing different natural sceneries is one of the starting points to begin understanding how other people live. It is a different life, when you are in Scandinavia, -10 degrees outside and it is considered a “normal” weather condition for the winter. It is a totally different thing, if you are in Brazil at 25 degrees, and some days of rain are considered their winter time. In other words, sceneries change where there are pine trees and snow above foot level and where there is the beach and the sun. Experiencing both climates actually gives you an eye-opening experience to other lifestyles, just because of the variety of sceneries there is in nature. Moreover, sceneries involve architecture of a place or a city and most of the time this is deeply connected to the history of the place and how people proceeded to live a long time ago.
NEW LANGUAGE
Language is the most basic tools to communicate and live in a society. It is how we communicate our needs, daily activities and in the end our emotions and all other aspects that shape our lives. Thus, going to a place where people speak another language is encouraging and sometimes even mandatory to learn it in order to make it in that place. Learning the language, though, also teaches you how the people of the place think. What is needed and considered crucial -for example, being polite in French or in English. It teaches you subtle things about a country’s culture. Sometimes it is not even about the language, but finding all ways in the end to communicate with other people, like gestures or context.
LIFE IS MORE
The biggest learning is that life is more than just a place you are born, the old ways you have been brought up with or what you have learned as traditions or education or working experiences. When you travel, you see there are so many other ways that people live their lives and the only way to experience that is to go out there. It is a very humbling realisation, when you understand that not your way of thinking and experiencing life is not the only way nor the correct way. In other words, that puts you also in perspective of understanding how people can have different values, mindset and thus, there is something freeing when you realise, “oh, I don’t have to live my life the way most people around me do”. It does not mean that is the only way, as I said before, and going with what makes you happy is the key. Maybe you find a job or that is not considered traditional, and that is great as long as it makes you happy. In that sense, you also discover more about yourself and true callings.
In the end, the most important message is that the world is out there, waiting to be discovered. Life is too short to experience just one place and certain situations.
