Travel: It's good for the soul

Somewhere during the coursework of my doctoral program, I read a book that referred to the value of travel to the human spirit. I think I was sitting in an airport waiting for a flight, and had been trying to dig in to a new library book I had found to add to the list of materials that were slowly becoming the literature review portion of my project. Offhand, I can’t remember the title, but I remember feeling a bit excited at these words, because they brought me a kind of odd validation.


Travel is good for the soul. It opens us up to different lifestyles, customs, sights, smells, sounds, and in that opening up, we are transformed. If we embrace the full experience, we will find that our own perceptions about life are somehow just a little bit different than they were before.

I have known this about myself for oh, I don’t know how long, but I had never considered it to be a universal experience. At the time, I interpreted this book review to be an important revelation, of course. And one that will now be a motivator for my continued exploration of this beautiful world of ours.

Not that I need motivation for such a thing, mind you.

Growing up, I did not have many opportunities to travel, so this became a future goal of mine. Call it what you will, I decided when I was a teenager -- probably not unlike many teenagers -- that I would one day venture off to places far and wide that struck my fancy. Mostly, I wanted to go to Colorado.

That’s a teenager for you. Of all the beautiful places in the world to visit, I was thinking, yes, I must go to Denver. (Not that Colorado isn’t awesome.) I even considered attending college out there, but my father talked me out of it because, he said, it would not be convenient for me to come home for holidays, etc. I’m not sure I bought that argument, but I conceded, since ultimately, it would be a matter of finances. I would get to Colorado one day, so I was not all that disappointed.

Since those days, I have had so many opportunities to visit places unknown to me. For the past five years, my job has taken me to some amazing places: Athens, Paris, Krakow, even Turkey. I have tried to make the most of these trips, though often, the chance to enjoy the culture and sights was limited. I’ve also taken a lot of road trips - great places like Maine, upstate New York, Vermont - and other pretty U.S. locales too.

This is what I have learned, so far: Wherever we are from, as much as we may be different, we are all in many ways, the same. We care about the same things: our families, our friends, our surroundings. We like good food. We are curious. And we are moved by the beauty of nature. Yet, it is often the people I meet along these journeys that provide the greatest enlightenment. That may be the biggest surprise of all, when I consider my travel experience to date.

There are plenty of trips left on my list of Places to Visit, among them Hawaii, Ireland, and perhaps even Australia or Egypt. I am hoping to make my “dream trip” next year (I’ll let you try to guess what that may be, for a while, but you can bet I’ll be inviting you along on the journey).

I know that those travels yet to come are part of my personal transformation.

Copyright 2011 By Marianne V. Heffernan