New Eyes

When I was in my late teens, I traveled to southern Germany to work, for a few months, at a small hotel in the Alps.  Away from home and on my own for the first time, it was in many ways a life changing experience.

During this time, my mother sent me a card in the mail with a Marcel Proust quote:

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”

I have often wrestled with this quote over the years since that summer for, as someone who enjoys "seeking new landscapes", it made me wonder if my travels were somehow frivilous or unnecessary.  Was I just too shallow to see the existing landscape with new eyes, I wondered?

But today I read a quote from the son of a man who's just on his way home after walking around the globe (yes, on foot!)  Asked what he thought of his father's eccentric, 11-year journey, he replied, "Often, without travelling, the media can impose a point of view".

This made me realise once again just how important travel, if possible, can be.

Many people have marveled at my desire to take my two 9-year-olds to Argentina for a school year, and their dad's alleged support of this apparently hair-brained scheme.  But I can already see the impact of media and peer group on Alex and Simon's points of view, despite their fairly "liberal" family, and I desperately want to broaden their horizons while they are still young enough for it to make a powerful impact.

I am also not so arrogant as to think that I have nothing to learn from this next adventure:  It will be the longest time I am away from "home", and in particular, living in a language that is not English or German. 

Inevitably, there will be challenges to face, both philosophical and practical, along the way.  But I am convinced that one of the best ways to see the old landscape with new eyes is to experience new landscapes that shape one's perspective.

New Landscape -- Here we Come!