Perspective

Last night, while tallying answers to a game of Boggle with my family, I had an “Aha” moment. As we compared our lists of words, I was stunned by how different each person’s words were, based on their unique sight perspectives of the board.

We all need experiences that bring fresh perspective – that awaken us from stagnant thinking, inspire new vision, and bring clarity and direction. For me, travel does this every time.

Last year, I spent hours on the open road traveling to see family. I let my mind wander, then lost myself in audio books rich in wisdom, history and culture. At sunset, windows down and hair flying, I turned up the music and drank in the amber glow of Utah’s rust-colored sandstone cliffs.

These hours alone were inspired and free, full of deep inner joy when I sang out loud to myself. I felt more alive than I had in years.

Travel can also move us and bring new perspective to our values.

A decade ago, within a small, windowless home in the high Andes mountains of Peru, I experienced a  connection between myself and another woman which defied language and culture.

A group of us visited the home of some children who attended the school where we were teaching and building. For a brief moment, I glimpsed the mother’s hesitancy as we took in the dirt floors and soot-covered walls of her home. Yet my perspective of her was so different from anything warranting the embarrassment that her eyes seemed to communicate,

Just that week, her family’s well had been vandalized, so they had no water. Her husband was looking for neighbors who could help him rebuild. We had brought shoes for her children to wear for the long walk to school and helped build greenhouses at school so students wouldn’t go all day without food. But, this woman’s generosity, opening her home to us all, in spite of her family’s hardships and her persistent courage caring for her family’s needs, were truly humbling.

I recognized that, despite our differing economic and cultural circumstances, she and I shared the same desire to care for our families. My heart honored her, woman to woman, mother to mother. Regardless of the language barrier, our eyes met and I poured in love…and I know she understood.

Her example of selfless humility prompted many of us there that day to revisit our definitions of wealth and grace. It also planted in my heart a desire to understand and connect women through our shared humanity. This call drives my sense of mission today.

When we travel with friends, spontaneity, fun, and lighthearted connections also have time to emerge as we unplug from our everyday responsibilities and roles.

Just last summer, traveling with a group of girlfriends who were also colleagues, I was struck by how liberating it was to not be in charge of logistics and travel plans as we’d usually be in our work and families. All I had to do on this trip was show up and watch it all unfold for me.

The conversations we had around the campfire immediately went deep, as if we'd been aching for permission to let whole new sides of ourselves emerge from behind our daily “game faces.” While I began the trip exhausted, the freedom and joy of this time with heart friends restored me.

Wherever I happen to be in the world, the night skies always provide unifying and expansive views. Christmas Eve 2011, as I gazed at the majestic Milky Way Galaxy outside a lodge in Colorado, I felt assured of my connectedness with my son. It comforted me to know that he could see these same familiar stars from where he was fighting near Taliban lines in Afghanistan.

Yet, seeing the Southern Hemisphere skies from the primeval grassland plateaus of South Africa or the Mars-like landscape of interior Australia, I’ve been humbled by the vast unknowns of the other side of the globe. The universe is infinite, and there’s so much more  to learn about myself, and others, as I explore our world.

I know that travel will continue to shift my inner and outer perspectives, and to provide one of our most basic needs – connection.