On Travel, Love and Romance

I'm not yet sure how it fosters humor but I'm open to laughter so very, very much. I would also add, "travel to relate , more than to explore."


"So travel, at heart, is just a quick way to keeping our minds mobile and awake. As Santayana,
the heir to Emerson and Thoreau with whom I began, wrote, "There is wisdom in turning as often
as possible from the familiar to the unfamiliar; it keeps the mind nimble; it kills prejudice, and it
fosters humor." Romantic poets inaugurated an era of travel because they were the great apostles
of open eyes. Buddhist monks are often vagabonds, in part because they believe in wakefulness.
And if travel is like love, it is, in the end, mostly because it's a heightened state of awareness,
in which we are mindful, receptive, undimmed by familiarity and ready to be transformed.
That is why the best trips, like the best love affairs, never really end." writer and novelist, Pico Iyer.