Why this voyage?

I always thought I had a reason for making this journey, but only now that I have decided to put it in writing do I realize that it is not as simple as it seems. Sure, I can list many reasons why travel is worth it, but I still can’t pinpoint the precise reason behind this slightly crazy gesture of leaving for a year or two. There are those who leave to escape from something, there are those who leave to seek fortune, to search for themselves, to find the truth, to get out of the comfort zone. I do not feel a void to fill, nor do I feel out of place, but I have only curiosity to sell (I make a good price) and a great passion for diversity. “Diversity” must be understood in all its forms: natural, anthropological, cultural, spiritual. How can I be born, live and die in the same piece of the world, having only seen a microscopic part of the rest? It would be like being born on a panoramic bench and spending your whole life staring at the bench. Now that I am about to turn away, I feel a certain sense of dizziness, but I have been waiting for so long that I now subconsciously know that I am ready.

So, after thinking for a long time, the conclusion is that the journey is an end in itself, I intend to make it for the beauty of traveling and for what can come from the experience of a journey. That’s all, whatever happens, it seems to me that it’s worth doing and that’s why I do it. It’s worth it because:

Instructive lessons are learned
Prejudices are knocked down, knocking them down with facts
You learn to cope in any situation
Other points of view are known
Superfluous things are left out
You sleep under a roof of stars (Kant would be proud of it)
The senses are refined
You learn to distinguish the essential from the superfluous

As an engineer enrolls in the master’s degree to become a more competent engineer, I enroll in an intensive life course to come out more trained as a man. But why now, why not wait another six months, a year? Around the world is a kind of appendix to the user’s manual of life. It makes more sense to read it in full before use, it seems to me. It is quite clear to me what to do in life, but it is advisable to explore a bit of the world to understand how to do it with more awareness.

However, even I am not very satisfied with such a generic motivation for this trip, so while I am there I prepare a list of questions to ask Mr. World, so when I meet him I do not make a silent scene.

  • What happens when I travel more than 14 consecutive days?
    How does it feel to cross an ocean by ship?
  • How does the approach to life and the scale of values ​​change between different cultures?
  • Is there life without a bidet?
  • What is the human and environmental impact of industrial production?
  • Is it true that in the other hemisphere the sun is in the north at noon?
  • Where will I go to work after the trip?
  • Why does African sickness exist and not American sickness or Asian sickness?
  • What do the stars say to each other? (Apparently they say something, read “The Heart of the Hunter” by L. Van der Post)
  • How popular is Lambrusco? (A red wine from where I live. Particularly the one made by Cantine Riunite)
  • How big is the world? (Even a child must be able to understand this, 40,000 km does not count as an answer.)

Enough, these are just examples, the others will come to my mind along the way.

“Christ! Did you see the streets? Just the streets. There were thousands of them! And how do you do it down there? How do you choose just one? One woman, one house, one piece of land to call your own, one landscape to look at, one way to die… All that world is weighing down on me, you don’t even know where it comes to an end, and aren’t you ever just scared of breaking apart at the thought of it?
The enormity of living it?”
 
Novecento (aka The Legend of 1900, by Alessandro Baricco)