An Excursion

Short trips sometimes become long trips. It happens that what was meant as a quick excursion into unknown territory, with the expectancy of a speedy return to normalcy, gets prolonged and stretched out indefinitely until one day you realize that reality has irrevocably changed. The anxious should therefore always stay at home where all habits are firmly set, and the world is clearly defined. It’s better never to learn that reality could have been different.

If you are made of more resilient stuff, however, you may venture out of your abode for a short period of time without risking your precious identity. It may even serve to affirm yourself and strengthen your own sense of righteousness. When you allow yourself to take a look into how distorted other environments and cultures are, your sense of pride and self-worth might increase, and you can face the world with greater assurance.

Differences are dangerous if you are weak and easily stressed out. If you get the idea that there are many possible answers to the same question, you are no longer safe. Then you may not be able to find your way home again. You may become a vagabond on a perpetual excursion, always on the lookout for solutions to nagging questions but getting farther from a reconciliation. When searching for certainty you get ever more uncertain and you can never return to safety again.

But then what is life if not a prolonged excursion? You are born in one place; it may be a good place, but it’s not the whole world. You acquire your basic knowledge at an early age, but there is more to learn. The chance that the entire readymade truth is found exactly where you find yourself is rather small, and even if it were, it wouldn’t be truly yours until you had examined it. Go out then. Look around. If you don’t find your way back, you have still gained more than you have lost if what you had was an illusion.

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