a philosophic journey
Memory is a journey’s starting point. Birth may be the only journey on which we start from zero. The world’s made up of journeys. Journeys are the discovery, survival, life and death which hundreds of different cultures have shared throughout history.
The word journey can have as many meanings as people do. Journey, in itself, isn’t a perfect word: it doesn’t mean exactly the same to everybody. Habermas puts it well when he says that a journey is a process, something we learn from other people and make our own. In that sense, each word we learn is a new journey and each person is a potential journey.
For some people, a journey starts as soon as you think of the destination. Sailors know that well. All winds are good for people who are sure about where they want to go. For other people, though, the opposite applies. Travelling is not knowing where you are going. Montaigne says that people get to know themselves when they come into contact with foreigners. Without wanting to question what the Bordeaux area philosopher says, you could also think that the opposite – being a foreigner in your own land – may be a more interesting journey. As R.L. Stevenson said, abroad doesn’t exist: a traveller is the only foreigner. Travellers travel with their own personalities and all their character. They “are” while they travel. And that existence includes carrying prejudices around with you. Éxupery
called that the traveller’s “invisible clothes”. The traveller reaches the real destination on discovering his or her real self. As Wendell Holmes put it, “Man’s mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions”.
Not all journeys have the same consequences. As said above, for most members of different cultures travelling is not a matter of leisure. Travelling is a characteristic of the human race. Migration. Deportation. Flight. Those are journeys too. As you will see on the next few pages, even though journeys may be aesthetically similar, they can also be absolutely opposite experiences.
Travellers without self-criticism do not exist. And the worn-out old metaphor of internal journeys isn’t enough. To travel, intention is not enough. In Cesare Pavesere’s words, travelling is an atrocity. It means we have to trust people we don’t know and leave the people and things we’re comfortable with behind. You’re unbalanced all the time. Only the most basic things are yours: the air, moments of relaxation, dreams, the sea, the sky.
In the times we live in, we take keeping still to be losing our place and not moving to be a synonym of failure. That’s why travelling has become a necessary model for leisure, even though often we don’t know what makes us travel apart from the desire to feed photos onto the social networks. You don’t travel to find yourself, you travel to get away from yourself.
Nietzsche said it in Zaratustra’s words: There’s no way back from those experiences. Whether you travel to find yourself or to get away from yourself, there’s no going back anywhere. Starting points never stay still. Everything moves: starting points, home, family, friends, countryside, memory, you yourself. That’s why nobody ever really comes back from a journey.
The word journey can have as many meanings as people do. Journey, in itself, isn’t a perfect word: it doesn’t mean exactly the same to everybody. Habermas puts it well when he says that a journey is a process, something we learn from other people and make our own. In that sense, each word we learn is a new journey and each person is a potential journey.
For some people, a journey starts as soon as you think of the destination. Sailors know that well. All winds are good for people who are sure about where they want to go. For other people, though, the opposite applies. Travelling is not knowing where you are going. Montaigne says that people get to know themselves when they come into contact with foreigners. Without wanting to question what the Bordeaux area philosopher says, you could also think that the opposite – being a foreigner in your own land – may be a more interesting journey. As R.L. Stevenson said, abroad doesn’t exist: a traveller is the only foreigner. Travellers travel with their own personalities and all their character. They “are” while they travel. And that existence includes carrying prejudices around with you. Éxupery
called that the traveller’s “invisible clothes”. The traveller reaches the real destination on discovering his or her real self. As Wendell Holmes put it, “Man’s mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions”.
Not all journeys have the same consequences. As said above, for most members of different cultures travelling is not a matter of leisure. Travelling is a characteristic of the human race. Migration. Deportation. Flight. Those are journeys too. As you will see on the next few pages, even though journeys may be aesthetically similar, they can also be absolutely opposite experiences.
Travellers without self-criticism do not exist. And the worn-out old metaphor of internal journeys isn’t enough. To travel, intention is not enough. In Cesare Pavesere’s words, travelling is an atrocity. It means we have to trust people we don’t know and leave the people and things we’re comfortable with behind. You’re unbalanced all the time. Only the most basic things are yours: the air, moments of relaxation, dreams, the sea, the sky.
In the times we live in, we take keeping still to be losing our place and not moving to be a synonym of failure. That’s why travelling has become a necessary model for leisure, even though often we don’t know what makes us travel apart from the desire to feed photos onto the social networks. You don’t travel to find yourself, you travel to get away from yourself.
Nietzsche said it in Zaratustra’s words: There’s no way back from those experiences. Whether you travel to find yourself or to get away from yourself, there’s no going back anywhere. Starting points never stay still. Everything moves: starting points, home, family, friends, countryside, memory, you yourself. That’s why nobody ever really comes back from a journey.
