It's always amazed me how even a simple summer vacation romp to the beach can change one's perspective on the entire universe. Imagine leaving your comfortable country and traveling half way around the world and spending two weeks in a culture wholly and completely different from everything you've ever known. Think that would change how you view things? You bet 'cha.
My plane landed Friday afternoon around 1pm in Atlanta, GA. Funny, I don't remember Georgia ever being so green! I was dazzled by the colors: green, pink, white, blue, yellow. Where did they come from? Had they always been there? How had I failed to see them? And if they had always been there, what changed so that I was now so aware of them I had to wear sunglasses? Perhaps it was all that time surrounded by the browns and tans of India.
Don't get me wrong! India is vibrant. Her people are colorful, their clothes are an explosion, a riot of pattern and hues; a feast for the eyes. India is a feast for the senses, all of them, even that enigmatic sixth sense many speak of but can never fully explain. But there is a layer of sepia that lays over all this feasting, a hunger than penetrates everything, everyone, even if you're fully fed and well watered.
I guess I didn't notice it while I was there. I was too busy taking it all in. I didn't even write as I'd planned. I didn't want to miss a thing by sticking my nose in a notebook or my eyes behind a lens. After the initial jet lag has worn off, however, I see that for all their smiles, and hello auntie's, India is hungry. Hungry for what? That may take a few more days to chew on before I can properly put a voice to the observation.
I saw effluents driving BMW's. I saw beggars holding naked babies. I saw children, half clothed, beaming with white smiles, running up to me just to shake my hand. And I saw the sad, tired eyes of a women carrying a large load of bricks, balanced precariously atop her head. I spent the majority of my time with a gaggle of orphans who have no idea they are lacking anything at all! They are happy, they are whiny, they are playful. They are like any other 3 or 4 year old you may meet anywhere in the world. And of all the things I saw, of all the impressions I brought back, they branded me the deepest. We are all the same, deep down, beneath the layers of color and culture. Take a 3 year old from India and put her in a room with a 3 year old from America and I guarantee they would play happily for hours without concern of their differences. As I sat on the marble floors of their room, watching them run around, giggling, I realized that all anyone needs is a place to belong. Be it a penthouse apartment, a ranch house in the suburbs, or a three room orphanage in a forgotten part of India.
It matters not where we go. What matters is what impressions we return with. If an adventure can not alter your perspective, can not change your reality, can not open your eyes to a deeper more vibrant current, one that has been flowing all around you all along, then our travels were in vain. We travel not to acquire stamps on a flimsy passport; we travel to experience, to open our eyes, to broaden our horizons. We travel to acquire stories. And we travel, ultimately, to return home a new person. To pepper our day to day life with the astonishment that there is a whole world out there beyond our comfort zone. If we travel with these things in mind, we will grow large enough, I believe, in order to embrace the whole world and hopefully, change the lives of those around us.
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