Travel can serve many purposes for me. It's a mode to explore the unknown, to see things that I have never seen before. Sometimes, it's simply a means to escape. I've lost track of how many times I've gotten in the car just to escape a routine, or sometimes even myself. Sometimes it's to meet other people, a sort of variation of the first reason. I can go and meet someone and then get a deeper sense of the world. The difference between this reason and the first one is that many times I don't have to go far at all, because shades and hues of humanity are found anywhere. In a variance of this, I can learn more about God, because if God is infinite, the more I see and the more people I meet, the deeper dimension of God I encounter.

     David Yeadon, a traveler that has explored many corners of the world, suggests another reason to travel: to learn to know more about oneself. I've had this experience myself when I travel. I've heard people suggest travelers do what they do to avoid themselves. In other words, by being on the run all of the time, one at least has the illusion of escaping oneself. As a sometime traveler, I have almost never had that experience. Certainly, it is impossible as an actuality: one cannot avoid one's experience and reality entirely short of committing suicide. But certainly, it's possible to pretend that by going somewhere else you're not taking yourself. But though I've traveled to flee external conditions, albeit knowingly temporary, on some level I knew I was going along. That was always part of the thrill: I'd be coming along, and by dealing with unknown circumstances, I could stretch myself. It was like I was meeting different parts of myself in each event.

     "The Way of the Wanderer", a book by Yeadon, deals with this very circumstance, the idea of travel as meditation. That by traveling , one can meet different selves that they didn't know they had. This is in itself a radical concept, because much of psychology suggests that the self is static, that once you figure out self, the idea is to act exactly the same way in all circumstances. The concept that self is really an infinite compilation of selves can be surprising, as well as disconcerting. This means how you'll behave in any set of circumstances can't be predicted. If that's true for you, then it has to be for everyone else; and how do you plan a life under those conditions? It makes all life experiences into adventures, reminding of the uncertainty of life and shattering the idea of security as being reality.

     I've run into this myself, from hiking in unfamiliar places to going to foreign countries where I'm reminded my native tongue is not necessarily the norm. Instead of operating on an automatic pilot where I think I have a concise self to deal with life, I find different dimensions of myself that I didn't know I had, or at least forgotten about. It's almost like exercising parts of my body that I don't usually exert, and maybe it's exactly the same thing, except psychically and spiritually rather than physically. I come home knowing myself differently, feeling that I have just met a new individual. Which is a reminder that the real journey is within, and that all ends of exploration begin and end with myself.