The Out of Sight Transformation
Travel has always been associated with relaxation and enjoyment. People travel to explore new or revisit favorite places. The idea that travel could also be a conduit for self growth and awareness,as discussed in the article Transformative Travel,is a very new concept but old tradition. Various religious groups send people across the world as missionaries. Missionary work was identified as a group involvement. everyone on the mission fulfilled the same purpose. Transformative travel is a combination of mission work and travel of leisure except it is based on an individual's personal goal.
Susan Ross,the author of the article Transformative Travel, assembles the transformative traveler into six distinct categories. The categories are pilgrims (traditional and goddess), mystic travelers, diaspora sojourners,individuals who initiates participating in travel as a rite of passage, secular travelers seeking healing and personal growth, and learners intending to gain consciousness through knowledge. Susan Ross states " Transformative travel ...
Throughout all texts discussed, there is a pervasive and unmistakable sense of journey in its unmeasurable and intangible form. The journeys undertaken, are not physically transformative ones but are journeys which usher in an emotional and spiritual alteration. They are all life changing anomaly’s that alter the course and outlook each individual has on their life. Indeed, through the exploitation of knowledge in both a positive and negative context, the canvassed texts accommodate the notion that journeys bear the greatest magnitude when they change your life in some fashion.
A traveling pilgrim deeply connects and explores the cultures they visit in the same way a spiritual tourist explores life's meaning and significance. In this way, spiritual pilgrims are made unique by their desire to find life purpose. As Falson's life begins to fall apart, he finds new life purpose through the study of St. Francis's Christ-like lifestyle of poverty and generosity. A reader can especially make this connection as Falson washes the genitals of a poor man and the impact it makes on him. Pilgrims studying history search for the purposes and deeper implications of each past event. They seek not just to know the facts but also their deeper
Most works of literature have their characters embarking on a journey or journeys to reach a desired location whether it is mentally or physically. These journeys do not stand alone but contribute to the piece as a whole. The Kite Runner focuses on Amir taking on life in his suffering country to moving to a land granting great opportunity and ultimately returning home to complete a deed that would stabilize him for the remainder of his life. In the epic The Odyssey, Odysseus or Ulysses in the Latin form takes on many challenges on the dangerous sea attempting to return home to Ithaca after being victorious in the Trojan War. Traveling can also reunite characters once again as it did for Amir and Hassan in The Kite Runner or bring together two such as Telemachus and Pisistratus in The Odyssey. “This journey has brought us together still more closely” (Homer 15.59-60). Characters walk through the journeys authors create on pages and typically change for the better or reach an ultimate goal.
The enlightenment period was full of social and intellectual growth. This time period changed the way people thought of the world and exposed the world to different cultures. It brought the world into several revolutions that will later contribute to great change for the modern world. Travel was significant during the enlightenment due to the enlightenment ideas that knowledge and information was gained through experience. In order for the people to get a better understanding of the world and gain information about other cultures, they had to travel to these people. During this era and time period of the enlightenment, travel was significant in order to get a quality and endless education. Denis Diderot shows the significance that travel did
Experiences of journeys provide insights into the lives of individuals and the world around them
Alexis Bunten based her information on personal experience such as working as a staff member for Tribal Tours in Sitka. She is able to provide information about how the tour guides are not at primitive as the tourist may think. Most of what the tour guides are doing is entertainment, which requires them to use commodified personas. Commodified personas can be defined as changing your character into what may be perceived by others. In the article she talks about a storyteller who is a native of Sitka who works as a tour guide. He tells a story but due to having to please the tourist he has added things in and changed the way the story is told. According to the reading “ the tourism worker expresses free choice
People have many definitions of the word “traveling”, but Dictionary.com states that traveling is defined as “to move or go from one place or point to another”. This is how Suzanne Berne refers to traveling also. “Traveling Close, Very Close, To Home” is a book written by Berne and in the book she gives many examples about people traveling. The main idea of the book is to explain no matter if we travel far or travel close, we all travel at some points in our life even if we our wandering off in our own little world. Berne then goes on to talk about people and their travels in life with examples and descriptions. Berne’s biggest statement about traveling though, is “while some believe traveling means going far away - imagining a trip to Bangkok
Every journey one takes is a life-changing experience that transforms them in some way. Not all journeys are mainly about physical travel. Some are more spiritual or reflective as they happen without the person leaving home. In Homer’s The Odyssey, the physical journey of Odysseus has transformed him into a man of peace, courage and love, while the spiritual
The books Thousand Pieces of Gold, Novice to Master, Into the Wild, and the movie Touching the Void all have to deal with taking a journey. To journey is the act of traveling from one place to another and to undergo a personal change. In Thousand Pieces of Gold, Lalu traveled from China to the United States, because she was constantly being sold. In Novice to Master, Soko Morinaga shares his journey of finding a zen temple in Kyoto where he became a zen master and teaches his readers about zen. In Into the Wild, Chris McCandless leaves his family after finding out his parents have been lying to him and takes a journey to Alaska. In Touching the Void, Simon Yates and Joe Simpson go on a journey to climb the west face of the Siula Grande in
Throughout Ralph Ellison’s novel, Invisible Man, the main character dealt with collisions and contradictions, which at first glance presented as negative influences, but in retrospect, they positively influenced his life, ultimately resulting in the narrator developing a sense of independence. The narrator, invisible man, began the novel as gullible, dependent, and self-centered. During the course of the book, he developed into a self-determining and assured character. The characters and circumstances invisible man came across allowed for this growth.
The world is full of people who have been on an incredible journey of some sort. It seems to be a burning desire in the adventurist’s heart to do something that they haven’t done before. There is an unexplainable satisfaction with completing the journey. The completion of an incredible journey may also cause an opposite effect. An individual may cross the finish with a hunger for more adventure or another mission. The journey can not only change one’s view of the world, but can help the adventurer to grow as a person as well. This can happen through inner or outer conflicts that a person has faced on their journey. I believe that my mission trip to Haiti was an incredible journey that left me with a thirst for more adventure and caused me to grow as a person.
It is a daily ritual...wake up, eat, shower, contacts, class. I do this every morning, however I have never stopped to think, "Why?"
“Migration uproots people from their families and their communities and from their conventional ways of understanding the world. They enter a new terrain filled with new people, new images, new lifeways, and new experiences. They return … and act as agents of change.” (Grimes 1998: 66)
There is nothing quite like traveling, going someplace new and finding out more about the world and yourself. Anyone can become a traveler it just takes a little bit of faith and courage. Traveling across the world or even across the country is a learning experience. When you are a traveler you see how people live and how different cultures work. It is the best educational experience you could give yourself. You see how the world works in a way no one can teach you. Seeing different cultures and people help build the person you want to be. If you are a traveler the world influences you, because when traveling, you see the good and the bad, and you learn from the right and the wrong. I am very lucky that I am able to be a traveler and see this
The world is a magnificent place that’s full of life and new places. Places that are waiting to be walked upon and viewed by the eye’s of travelers. To make new memories and go places that is beyond the walls of reality and new pathways of life. To truly experience the wonders that the world has to offer can be expressed by the life of one single person, setting off into the world to gain a higher purpose about the world. Traveling individually enables people to broaden their minds and accumulate new ideas and new experiences both nationally and internationally. By setting off into the world a person has the ability to learn so many new things, but also find so much about themselves while in the process of traveling.