In this Year 2011, Make Time to Travel

“We need to travel. If we don’t offer ourselves to the unknown, our senses dull. Our world becomes small and we lose our sense of wonder. Our eyes don’t lift to the horizon; our ears don’t hear the sounds around us. The edge is off our experience and we pass our days in a routine that is both comfortable and limiting. We wake up one day and find we have lost our dreams in order to protect our days. Don’t let yourself become one of those people. The fear of the unknown and lure of the comfortable will conspire to keep you from taking the chances the traveler has to take. But if you take them, you will never regret your choice. To be sure there will be moments of doubts when you stand alone, on an empty road, in an icy rain or when you are ill with a fever in a rented bed. But as the pains of the moment will come, so too will they fall away. In the end you will be much richer, so much stronger, so much clearer, so much happier and so much a better person that all the risk and hardship will seem like nothing compared to the knowledge you have gained.”

from “Letters to My Son” by Kent Nerburn

There are many ways to travel: across the country and the world, inside ourselves, into new intellectual or artistic territory. Each form of travel offers an unique opportunity for growth and validation, as eloquently expressed by Nerburn in the quote above. Do you have current plans to travel? Share them with us below.

As you begin this New Year, consider traveling with Healing Icons to Italy in May.