One more piece on time. A reply to a comment on the original post:
The next piece of the puzzle (as the person alluded) is that it is possible to travel and, alas, never leave. There are certainly obvious ways to do this -- eat at McDonalds in Prague, stay at the Four Seasons in Bombay -- but there are less obvious mis-takes we all tend to make.
Even those of us that are lucky enough to adventure and go to new places will often fail to see things with innocence, instead dropping into an all too habitual mode of comparisons.
We have this bias towards seeing things as 'like' other things (as with the cache problems of false assumption). You look at an arch and it reminds you of one you saw in a book. You have this tea and it reminds you of an orange. Part of it is how we learn, part of it is overreaching on the part of our somewhat pathetic brains (out of fear, maybe just trying to keep rational balance).
(I think there was a New Yorker cartoon or a David Byrne lyric where the person is looking out at a great mountain vista and turns to his companion to say, "gosh, it's so beautiful. It almost reminds me of this postcard I saw.)
This is NOT an easy thing to solve. Even being very conscious of this problem, you'll find that many of your conversations with locals will involve descriptions based on what things are like in America or more often
your conversations with traveling companions are about things familiar.
There is this Concept that the poet Keats came up with - a bit heady but worth a remark - Negative Capability. It is a state in which a person "is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason". I like that "irritable reaching after the fact" part the best. It's could be looked at as similar to the tendency to reach into the cache.
I found an academic interpretation of Negative Capability that is better than anything I could hack together. It described quiet perfectly what 'seeing the world' can be, especially in travel. So here it is:
"It implies the capacity to engage in a non-defensive way with change, without being overwhelmed by the ever-present pressure merely to react. It also indicates empathy and even a certain flexibility of character, the ability 'to tolerate a loss of self and a loss of rationality by trusting in the capacity to recreate oneself in another character or another environment' (Hutter, 1982: 305)."
Phew. It's a lot, but it's so right on. To really experience those new places without any processing. Just to take them in, not think as much. It really is telling the commentary of the mind to chill out and take a
breather.
There is no doubt in my mind (ha) that this is our problem back home but I'm not sure in our modern existence we can do much more than treat it like an unruly kid. Keep it on a balanced diet (not too much sugar) and give it a timeout when appropriate.
I don't know how much this does change as one gets older than I am. I do have a sense the some folks do arrive at a greater peace. Some anxieties die down and with it some of the commentary. There may be an opportunity to re-open one's eyes, see things anew, but it's probably very individual. Maybe you can talk about having come to some resolution about 'you' if that's opened more space to see more other things (people more clearly, the world more clearly). Essentially, can one more easily take oneself out of the picture?
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