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Why I Live to Travel

02/18/2008 1:39 pm

Extending Kindness and Showing Appreciation

Judy Halbakken is a part of the Explore Asia family. She and her husband Dave moved (as in permanently moved) to Bangkok last year, making their Asian adventures more accessible and frequent.

Judy’s travel journals are amazing. She has a unique ability to weave personal stories about her Asian adventures, without taking center stage. This segment from her journals fits perfectly with some of the blog’s recent themes.

With Judy’s permission, enjoy!

There’s a cartoon by Morrie Brickman that I clipped from a newspaper in the late 1960’s when I was in high school. It depicted a glum, weary man, dressed in a suit and tie, walking down a city street saying, “HOO-BOY! There’s got to be more to life than spending your life making a living.”

I was extremely impressed an adult could have an idea like that because I had been saying the same thing to myself. That cartoon is all I saved from my high school days. It gave me hope.

Travel provides me with some of this “more” to life, boosts my excitement about the future, tempers the gloom of the current world problems.

The way travel renews my enthusiasm reminds me most of how I felt while watching our son explore his expanding world as a toddler with his perspective that life yields daily surprises.

Everything is new and interesting. While traveling, I encounter surprises: frangipani blossoms blown down from high branches to the sidewalk where I can pick them up to savor the fragrance and delicate beauty, the monk on the bus who laughs when he sees me tumble into my seat as the bus lurches forward, food I like so much I wonder how I survived without it.

In return for these gifts, it’s my greatest desire to contribute to world peace by being considerate, extending kindness, showing appreciation� bringing a smile to someone who doesn’t have the privilege of traveling.

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