Men need to Travel and Explore

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime."

- Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad (1869), Vol. II, Conclusion

I’m going to Japan next week.

I’ll be there for a few weeks. Please excuse my absence.

This will be my first trip to Japan, “the land of the rising sun.” I can’t wait.

I’ve been fortunate to have traveled to several other countries in Asia in the past. Always alone. As Henry David Thoreau said, “The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.”

But on this trip to Japan, I’ll be with good company. I’ll visit several Japanese grad school classmates and alumni friends, as well as a close friend, Ayane, who I met in the Boston Public Library a number of years ago.

Ayane lives in Tokyo and will travel with me in Japan. She’s a wonderful travel companion. I’m a fortunate man.

Japan is “the land of the rising sun” because in China, the sun rises from Japan, from the east. Apparently, some sailors in China, pointing towards Japan, told Marco Polo that land is where the sun rises from. That was 700 years ago.

Marco traveled throughout Asia along the Silk Road between 1271 and 1295. His book, The Travels of Marco Polo, gave many Europeans their first look into Asia.

My Japan itinerary thus far includes Tokyo, Kyoto, and Okinawa. Ayane has family in Okinawa.

My dad used to tell me about Okinawa. His brutal memories of the Battle of Okinawa I’ve heard many times. For a while, he was a high school history teacher. He knew more about World War II than anyone I knew.

The initial invasion of Okinawa on April 1, 1945, by the US Army, Marines, and Allies against the Imperial Japanese Army, was the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific Theater of WWII. The battle was the bloodiest in the Pacific; roughly 50,000 Allied forces and 150,000 Okinawans died.

Dad always encouraged me to go to Japan, especially because he knew about Ayane. I think he was afraid to go there; maybe because he knew men who fought in WWII there and never returned.

I'm looking forward to Japan. There is something super exciting about when I first step onto a foreign soil. Exploring a new land, an adventure, a rush of excitement, new aromas, new people, new everything, and not really sure of what happens next.

So, I’ll be taking a break from writing as I explore Japan. I think taking a break from our passions helps us grow and reinvigorate. It’s like taking a break from your lover; nothing is more exciting than coming back to her. I'll be coming back to my writing, my Muse.

Travel for learning

“Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.”
– Seneca 

I think a lot about the Nine Pillars of Well-Being. I try to understand how they play a role in our lives, especially for us men over 50. See the Nine Pillars of Well-Being here.

Pillar 4, Active Learning, encompasses a wide landscape of ways to learn. Learning is good for the brain and travel is a potent way to learn. For me, whenever I travel to new places, I come back a changed man.

Traveling to new places presents us with new challenges, new environments, and new growth. This is healthy for the brain. It improves our brain’s capacity to rewire itself and strengthen its networks; it builds “brain resiliency” or “cognitive reserve.”

Cognitive reserve is your brain’s ability to cope with obstacles, to maneuver around unforeseen challenges. It’s improved through life experiences like travel. The more learning opportunities in your lifetime, like travel to new places, the greater cognitive reserve you have, and the healthier your brain.

Research shows that people with greater cognitive reserve are less likely to have degenerative brain changes associated with dementia and other brain diseases. By putting demands on your brain from learning new things and traveling to new places, you build cognitive reserve.

Research shows that anyone can improve cognitive reserve at any age, no matter their previous education levels. We need to continually learn for optimal brain health. Travel is a superb way to keep learning. See this AARP link here.

When we expose ourselves to new environments, our brains forge new connections, often leading to breakthrough moments of inspiration. As we navigate through foreign lands, our brains are challenged, faced with new ideas, drawing familiar parallels, and sparking innovative ideas.

For me, travel is an essential part of my learning. I never want to stop traveling.

Men need to explore

“Travel is never a matter of money, but of courage.”
– Paulo Coelho 

By nature, men are explorers, in search of adventure. That’s how we are wired. It’s intrinsic to who we are. We need to explore.

Men want to chart the unknown, to take on challenges, to cut a new path; we have a need to see, touch, smell, and feel the vastness of our world. It's more than a simple bucket list.

Travel fuels our primal urge. Every time we leave home for a new land, we are engaging in a ritual as old as humanity itself. For some men, it’s an insatiable thirst; an eternal quest for understanding, growth, connection, and adventure.

Similar to pushing ourselves to the point of failure in the gym for muscle growth, going beyond familiarity in travel can be transformational. Growth happens with uncertainty, by not knowing what happens next.

It’s a humbling day when a man can no longer search and explore, when he doesn't have the energy, when he loses interest, motivation, or ability to travel. Because it is part of a man’s nature to explore, it is sad to see him become weakened, to see him lose his edge.

If he can, it’s healthy for a man to push himself out of his boundaries, to disrupt his routine, to hit the road.

Travel as a Journey Inward

“There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.”
– Robert Louis Stevenson 

Travel is an opportunity to go far away, especially deep inside. You learn a lot about yourself when you travel, especially if you travel alone. A journey out into the world is at the same time an internal expedition.

Travel challenges us in ways everyday life doesn’t, our outside world and our inner world. We can discover a new part of ourselves, or a long-forgotten part, in a foreign land.

When we step outside our comfort zone, just a little past fear, we push toward a greater understanding of who we are. Transformation and growth happen when we step out into the unknown.

We have a better view of ourselves when we travel away from familiarity and routine. It helps us understand who we want to become, where we want to go, what we care about. It makes us introspective.

Travel reminds us of how small-minded, self-centered, trivial, and ignorant we can be. It gives us an opportunity to reflect, reassess, reevaluate, rejuvenate, and refresh our sense of purpose.

Travel helps expand the mind, discover new ways to interpret the world, gives us inspiration, makes us adaptable. Travel makes us braver.

Travel boosts creativity

“Once a year, go somewhere you’ve never been before.”
– The Dalai Lama 

Travel enhances our creativity. New landscapes, diverse people, and unique customs act as a source of inspiration and innovation. We are faced with novel stimuli, new experiences, unfamiliar sights, sounds, food, drink, and entertainment. It paves a new layer in our minds.

Traveling fosters a state of mind where fresh ideas sprout, and creative solutions emerge. For us men, this means expanding our horizons, finding new ideas, new solutions, new hobbies, or even rediscovering old passions with a renewed vigor.

For men over 50, especially those with a wealth of life experience like having a family or demanding career, travel brings new perspectives and can lead to profound creative breakthroughs. Whether it’s a business idea, a work of art or music, or a newfound passion, travel can be a catalyst that ignites our creativity.

Many men over 50, with less pressure now to support a family, who have moved on from chasing money and success, are more interested in a life that expresses their creative interests across a broad range of activities including music, art, sailing, writing, and other ways of contributing wisdom. Travel invigorates these creative interests.

Conclusion

“Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson 

As I embark on my trip to Japan, I encourage you to consider your own adventures. In travel, and the experiential learning and personal growth it promotes, lies a path to a deeper understanding of ourselves and the world.

Travel changes us for the better. It’s an investment in our Well-Being. With an open mind, it can be one of the most potent tools for growth.

As much as I enjoy a cappuccino in Rome and a croissant in Paris, exploring coffee bars in the streets of Ho Chi Minh city in Vietnam, or trying new food near the beaches in Phuket, Thailand is a very different experience. Traveling through Asia is a whole other world. I'm looking forward to Japan.

Instead of the same old annual default vacation, try a new place. Go where you’ve never been before.

I’ll be back at my desk in mid-November. I look forward to sharing some of my experiences traveling in Japan and elsewhere. It’s time to pack my bags.

In the meantime, I’ve started to work on my Japanese:
Hello – Konnichiwa
Thank you – Arigato
Good morning – Ohayo
Coffee please – Kohi o kudasai
Gin martini please – Jimmatini o kudasai
Where is the restroom – Toire wa dokodesu ka
Good evening – Konbanwa

Cheers to you and your travels!

Thank you for reading.

Be well,

Peter Pavlina