Living outside the box.

Fridays always stir up my wanderlust. 

In college, we managed to skip around Europe some...and a few other places. I told my now-husband that I could be a nomad, and it was truth. Home was where I was, and in each place we went, I could see myself there. Blending in. Sitting at that little café. Walking, walking, walking. Trains, trains, trains. City or edge of civilization. Or somewhere in between.

via Flickr. Polebridge, Northwest Montana. Try the bear claw.

Now that there are other responsibilities, we tend to stick on this side of the Atlantic. And sometimes, pretty close to home. Which is okay. Because, when it comes to travel, luxe or cheap isn't the point. The point is in the going.

It sounds silly, but even just crossing the county line does something. Unleashes a little part of us that sees the same landscape day in and day out and has stopped taking it in. It reminds us that people live differently in different places. And that different places aren't that far away. It reminds us that tolerance to a way of living other than our own is vital to compassion. And that interest in someone other than ourselves and our own ways of doing things is healthy.

Ten minutes west of my house.

Twenty minutes east of my house.

Travel also shows us that life isn't always what it seems. It teaches us that stereotypes can be wrong. That small cities can be surprisingly progressive. That oppression exists in radical ones. That beauty and sorrow co-exist. Of joy and wonder stirred with aching despair. Of wealth. Of poverty. And everything in-between. 

I heart this quote. Though, really, it's not about where you've been, but how each place has changed you.

So why do some people travel the world and come back no different than they left? It seems like such an impossibility, yet it happens.

Maybe it's that, no matter what the eyes view, it's not the part of us that does the seeing. Walking around with eyes wide open isn't enough. They look, but they cannot and do not determine what leaves an impression on us – or we would all be affected by things in the same way and same form.

A softened heart, however, sees all and keeps it for eternity. It is where the nature and value of our travel experiences live and are pumped to and absorbed into every fiber of our being. An open heart allows impressions to made and those impressions to change us. And whether they make us sad or happy, I have to think that the ways they change us are forever and for the better.