Traveling appears to be one of the trends endorsed by lots. I have long been wondering what good traveling brings. We travel to see amazing views, to explore new environments, to be with nature, to experience different culture, and so on. These are first-order experience. (I wonder if there is a terminology for this first-order experience — experience achieved by our 5 senses.) We typically take photos and record videos of these experiences; we then share our documentations with friends (or maybe just ourselves). We may revisit these experiences once in a while, with more thoughts and through story-telling. And by the way, I refer to the thought-incorporated experiences (first-order + thoughts) as…, without any surprise, second-order experiences.
We travel for these experiences. That could be our only purpose. We grow from these experiences. They expand our minds and souls. They add perspectives. At this point, I would like to introduce “third-order experiences.” Quite frankly, I have had quite some trouble defining these third-order experiences. They could be food for our sub-consciousness. They could be feeding something the transcends our awareness. They mold our personality, form our motifs. In essence, we travel to become a better version of ourselves. We travel to see. We travel to feel. We travel to reflect. We travel to connect our being to the external, beyond our being.
Traveling generally refers to the movement of our physical bodies to a different geographical location — an external motion. On the basis of the true purpose(s) of traveling, one can also travel internally to achieve similar experiences and eventually the same purpose(s). This internal motion is mainly an activity of the mind. As a thinker, I very often travel inward. I internalize things, to reflect on things, to create new patterns, to understand myself. Adventure does not have to be an exploration of the world around us, the complement space of our bodies (as in the complement of a set). Adventure can be traveling into the many depths that our bodies hold. Mysteries certainly lie everywhere around us, but they can also be found deep within us. It is satisfying to embark upon trips to different places to fulfill what your five senses desire and to… tell stories. Is it equally satisfying to dwell into mental trips to explore our rationality, and its irrational counterpart, to understand the yin and yang of our bodies as a whole? The answer shall depend on our life purposes.