There is something extraordinary that happens when we step outside the familiar — when the landscape changes, the language sounds different on our ears, when even the simplest daily routines feel new. Travel, in all its forms, is more than a way to escape; it’s a deep, soulful nourishment that reconnects us to ourselves and the world around us. It is a masterclass, gently — and sometimes boldly — reminding us to see with fresh new eyes and live with a beginner’s mind.
Travel as Soul Nourishment
In the busyness of everyday life, it’s easy to fall into patterns that leave us disconnected: from our dreams, from wonder and sometimes even from our own inner voice. Travel reminds us awaken. It asks us to pay attention — to the scent of jasmine in the air, to the colours of the sunset in a landscape we’ve never seen before, to the kindness of a stranger helping with directions (or in my case this morning, directing me to a quiet place to work from in the local library).
When we travel, we temporarily step away from the titles, roles, and responsibilities that often define us. We return to a purer state of being: the explorer, the question-asker, the awe-filled observer. This reconnection and remembering what it’s like to be curious and mindful is a balm for the soul. It invites joy. It invokes gratitude. It initiaties a deeper sense of being alive.
Learning the Art of the Beginner’s Mind
One of the most beautiful gifts of frequent travel is how it naturally cultivates a beginner’s mind — a concept rooted in Zen Buddhism that means approaching life without preconceptions, like a true novice, open and curious especially to what we can learn from the experience.
When you are in a new place, everything demands fresh attention. How do I order coffee here? What is the proper way to greet someone? How do I cross this wildly busy street? What are the local botanical gardens like? Suddenly, assumptions you didn’t even realize you carried are stripped away. You are no longer the expert. You become the student of life again. And this is so true for me here today in a place that I have been travelling through since I was 8 years’ old but never actually taken the time to stop and take the time to explore and learn more about.
And this, perhaps more than anything else, is how travel transforms us: by reminding us how much there is still to wonder about, to learn, to experience. In a world that often praises mastery and control, allowing ourselves to not know — and to delight in not knowing — is a profound act of humility and freedom. I personally love going to a place with the express intention of what can I learn and take away and implement into my life to make it better. It’s such a deeply relaxing and yet profound way to be.
Bringing Travel Home
You don’t have to be halfway across the globe to nurture this way of seeing. Every trip plants seeds of wonder that you can bring back into your everyday life. You can walk around your own area with new eyes. You can savour a conversation with a stranger. You can taste your morning coffee as if it’s the first time. At home, we don’t frequent the same café – there are many different places we grab coffee from to keep things fresh. Likewise, we also recently checked out a local garden that we hadn’t walked around for many years’ and we still haven’t visited all of the local museums! There’s still may back tracks yet to discover and I love that about where we live – we’ll never see all of it and isn’t that fun?
Travel teaches us that the extraordinary is always waiting beneath the surface of the ordinary — if only we remember to look. And it could be as simple as visiting a local tourism information centre as a springboard. Tell them what interests you and you may be surprised at what you find!
A Closing Invitation
If you feel the tug of wanderlust, honour it. Even a short journey can be an opening. Let the world shape you. Let it soften and expand you. Because in the end, travel is not just about the places you go — it’s about the parts of yourself you rediscover along the way. And perhaps the greatest journey of all is learning to walk through life itself — wherever you are — with the wide-open wonder of a beginner’s mind. Because after all, life is a wild adventure waiting for us to explore it.
Photo by Alex P: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-looking-at-hot-air-balloons-3278215/