Expanding your brain, Part 1

02/26/2006

I’ve always noticed that anytime I pull my kids out of school for a travel adventure, their brains explode.

That is, explode in a good way—they become more aware, they suddenly make connections and draw conclusions that wouldn’t have occurred to them otherwise.

As Marcel Proust said, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.“

So I asked around, and Derek Wade sent me the following email with his observations on travel and “having new eyes”

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It may seem odd, given how little travel we do these days, but my wife and I are travel junkies. We definitely notice that our brains feel stretched after being in an unfamiliar place, amongst unfamiliar people, possibly even speaking an unfamiliar language. Indeed, after most of our trips I remark on the Oliver Wendell Holmes quote that “a mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.”

Part of it could be the experience of travel itself, and not just the destination. Unless travel has become routine to you, being forced to consciously manage your clothes, toiletries, time, current location and navigation around a new city has a way of focusing your attention on what are otherwise everyday activities. The drive to the airport (and more notably, from your destination airport) is quite a bit different from the routine drive to work. You pay attention, and the meditation folks out there might agree that a mind that practices paying attention is more awake than those that don’t get such practice.

But being in a different place and among different people has its own benefits. When my wife and I return home from a trip, we feel like our senses and thoughts have been stretched, as if we’ve learned to see in a new range of colors and can now enjoy all the ways our home neighborhood shines in the ultraviolet and x-ray portions of the spectrum. The feeling decays slowly, however; I’ve come to modify the Holmes quote to “takes a long time to return to its original dimensions.”

But while it lasts, we find ourselves ~~- for example -~~ being more chatty with strangers than we used to be (after returning from Oklahoma); being more aware of nature, the sky, and recycling (after Seattle); using more public transportation and choosing to pay a little more for better quality food (France). As we lived immersed in these other cultures we adjusted ourselves to them, at first consciously and then automatically taking our behavioral cues from the people and environment around us.

In a way, we became Oklahomans, island-dwellers, Brits, or French. Just as we noticed all the differences about our travel destinations when we first arrived there, upon returning we noticed all the ways— for good or ill—that our hometown might appear different to a foreign traveller.

Having to pay attention. Letting yourself be shaped by a different environment. Seeing your own hometown with the eyes of an outsider. These are the reasons we love travel beyond just the food or the attractions, and the reasons why, even as we wearily unpack our bags, we feel so alive and awake afterwards. As my wife observes, it makes you wonder about those people who prefer to stay home for the very same reasons!