Opening up our horizons through travelling

Most of us have heard a phrase that ''travelling opens up our horizons.'' I have heard it often enough and believed it to be true. Somehow it always made sense to me. Of course, you travel to different places and cultures, meet people with customs different from those of your own culture and inevitably that has to open you up, it has to increase your level of tolerance for difference. Well, sometimes it is true, and sometimes not. Also, for some people it is true and for some not. What I've realised in the last few days is that until now I've always understood the above phrase to mean a process of external opening, but what became very clear to me while travelling in India is that external opening is only one and maybe even smaller part of the 'horizons opening process.' Another component of this 'horizon opening process' is opening up of our inner horizons. When we travel in cultures that are substantially very different from our own culture we inevitably are faced with a need to travel through uncharted and often hidden territories of our own comfort zones. It is at this point when travelling starts to challenge our comfort zones that we have a chance to go on the inner journey to places in ourselves where we are stuck, where anxiety and fear reside. These are the moments when we have a chance to acknowledge our anxiety and discomfort, to choose “to feel the fear and do it anyway” and if we do, chances are that after initial discomfort we shall open up to experience our own humanity, which inevitably will make us much less stuck up, more able to laugh at ourselves and ultimately more humble.

Let me use a recent example to illustrate what I am trying to convey, above, about opening our horizons through meeting our comfort zones while travelling. Two weeks ago Jerry, my partner, and I were due to travel from Cochin in the coastal area of central Kerala, to Kumily, in the beautiful, hilly, nature protected area of the Western Ghats. We knew that the only way to get there was by road and our guide book informed us that there were regular buses going to Kumily or Thekkady. So off we went to the main bus station to enquire about possibilities. In our minds we were set on a private air-conditioned minibus, which normally cost 3 times more than the state buses, but still we were quite happy to pay for the comfort and what we expected to be a safer option.

Well, we were in for a surprise, there were no private buses going from Cochin to Kumily; only state-ran buses. There were taxis to be hired, but they cost 10 times more than the state buses. Since we decided we were travelling through India on a budget, we were not prepared to pay such a price. So there we were: our only option being a state bus for which you could not buy a reservation; just show up on the day and hope for the best. There were a few different buses parked at the bus station. Some of them were looking relatively new and modern. Hence, with a high dose of positivism, I asked the information officer to point out to me the type of bus that goes to Kumily, hoping he would point to a nice newish looking Volvo-cum-A/C orange bus. Instead, he pointed to what once was a white and blue bus, looking very old and battered, with no windows or, rather, open windows with no glass in them.

Our bus to Thekkady/Kumily

An unorthodox way of securing the door

I looked at Jerry and saw a mixture of what I would describe as a sinking feeling, together with disbelief on his face. Before I could even say anything, he stated with determination in his voice that he was not going to travel on this bus, especially not for 5 hours, which was meant to be the duration of this trip. Trying to stay positive and humorous I pointed out that at least air-conditioning would not be a problem: there would be a full draft blowing through those windows. Jerry saw no humour in my remarks. His comfort zones were challenged and his body language, as well as his feelings, were screaming in resistance Jerry expressed that the poor condition of the buses, not knowing whether we would have a seat or be left standing squeezed by every commuter in the area, as well as the speedy driving of the Indian bus drivers were not contributing to his needs for safety, comfort and ease (He later pointed out to me that it was also a case of “seen it, done it, got the T-shirt and feel no need to do it again”.) I was trying to hear him emphatically while my own imagination was running mad. Realising that it was a village to village commuter kind of bus I was getting very concerned about the duration of the trip. I was not reassured that the bus would be making many break-stops and therefore not leaving enough opportunity for toilet stops. This was a real concern for me because in this climate I need to hydrate a lot, which means regular loo stops. We both felt rather gloomy and decided to look for other options on the internet that might better meet our needs for safety, comfort and ease.

The only other option was to go on the train further south to Kottayam, which would have taken one hour. From there, we would be able to take an A/C bus to Kumily, but there was only one A/C bus leaving at 5 PM, with a journey time of some 4 hours to get there, which meant that the most of our trip would be done in the dark. OK; this was an alternative, but still with all the changes and travelling by different means of transport it was not going to contribute much to our need for ease. At the same time, driving in the night was definitely not giving me confidence and not contributing to my need for safety. So here we were, looking at two options, neither one fully meeting our needs. Of course, there was a third option: succumb to our fears and choose to avoid them by not going to Kumily at all. That strategy would have maybe met our needs for safety, comfort and ease but it would certainly not have contributed to our needs for adventure, playfulness, exploration and very importantly for self-respect. So we sat with all our feelings of discomfort and fear being quite prominent on the one side, and excitement and curiosity on the other, as well as the whole spectrum of our needs. Ultimately we decided to feel the fear and do it anyway.

If our imagined scenarios were not very hopeful, in reality, we experienced something close to the worst case scenario. The first hour went well, only us and a few other passengers on the bus. We were sitting comfortably in a seat that is normally meant for 3 people (3 smaller size Indians mind you, rather than full size Westerners). Then we were reaching suburban Ernakulam and the bus started filling up to the point that all seats were taken and the only free seat, or rather quarter of a seat by our standards, was the one next to Jerry and I. An Indian gentleman took that seat, squeezing Jerry between him and me. By this time, the bus was stuck in a traffic jam in the midday heat and instead of a draft refreshing us, we had the full heat, dust and smells of rush-hour traffic coming in. This situation continued for another two hours during which no toilet stops were made. Then suddenly, almost everybody disappeared off the bus, except for a few of us, die-hards. We transferred into a seat for two people to prevent any future clogging. I was getting uncomfortable, almost starting to be desperate when suddenly the bus stopped in an isolated hamlet with one restaurant, a shop and yes!

The toilet.

I was saved.

After a 10 minute break, we carried on, almost literally, flying. Recovered and fuelled after his lunch the driver started driving with vigour and serious determination to break the record in narrow mountain road curve-cutting driving. The conductor who was walking through the middle of the bus, trying to reach new passengers entering, was thrown from left to right while we were holding on for dear life to the seat in front of us. This was one of those situations that we were worried about yet now that we were in the midst of it we saw the comedy of it all. We could not stop laughing.

I saw a sign saying that Kumily was some 60 km away. By this time we were on the road for 5 hours already, and this meant that we had at least another hour, maybe even two hours to go given the curviness of the mountain road. Suddenly, we reached a small town and almost every school-age child from all the neighbouring villages was getting on the bus. It seemed as if the fuller the bus got the faster the driver was trying to drive. All the seats were full and the standing passengers were squeezing through the middle of the bus, the conductor was trying to move through this density of people while the driver was increasing the speed. In the midst of all this I turned away from the window to tell Jerry about a beautiful plant I just saw, only to witness the conductor falling literally into Jerry's lap. This was the proverbial cherry on the top. I became hysterical with laughter. And as if all this was not enough, a tropical monsoon rain started pouring down - remember no windows on this bus. Luckily there were some black shutters that could be pulled down. Suddenly all the shutters were down, inside, the full bus went pretty dark. Everybody breathing, humidity at its highest, mixed up with various smells of the passengers and the old bus's diesel fumes. All our comfort zones were pushed to the limit and yet we were laughing. There was not much we could do when in the middle of it all. Well, yes we could curse ourselves for ever stepping onto this bus, or we could argue with reality, or we just could take it as it was, laugh it off, and enjoy the ride. We chose this last option.

Six and a half hours later we arrived to Kumily/Thekkady alive, hungry, exhausted and psychologically numb, yet still smiling. Maybe we were smiling because we were still alive and in one piece.

To be fair to the Kerala State Road Transport Company, even though the buses are old, we realised they are still well maintained in terms of safety, and despite the fact that the drivers drive fast even when taking curves, they beep in advance, which is meant to inform other drivers that they are coming. Strange as it may sound, this system works in managing to keep Indian roads quite safe.

In retrospect, we are both glad we did the journey, happy that we dared to challenge some of our comfort zones and even laughed, when facing those challenges. Most importantly, we came out of it being much more acquainted with our own strengths and limits.

Do we have a need to do it again? No. Would we do it again? Maybe yes. It is not important. What is important is that we stay open to travelling and exploring - be it an inner, or outer journey.

This blog has also been posted on A journey to India travel blog written jointly by Jerry Zondervan and myself. I choose to post it again here on this blog because in my opinion it actually examines some universal issues such as anxiety, fear and dealing with it, challenging our comfort zones as well as needs and related strategies.

Self-acceptance and self-love

These two concepts go hand in hand with each other. You cannot truly and fully love yourself if you do not accept yourself fully, and you cannot accept yourself fully if you do not love yourself. It is a little bit like with the chicken and the egg, no one can really answer what comes first and it does not even matter which one comes first. What actually matters is that you cannot have one without the other and what is even more important is that in order to be a healthy, thriving, fulfilled, loving and loveable individual you have to both accept and love yourself as you are. 

In our modern societies, however, where the emphasis is often put on perfection and where self-love is often misunderstood for selfishness it is not easy to accept and love ourselves just as we are. It is even more counter culture to nurture ourselves with love and acceptance rather than to reproach ourselves with shame and guilt, especially when we and our actions are less than perfect. It is not easy, but it is essential. Marshall Rosenberg, the founder of the Nonviolent Communication approach used to say often ''anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.'' At first we might be puzzled by his statement. However, if we just stop for a moment and ask ourselves what message Marshall might wish to convey to us with such a statement we might discover that perhaps he is saying: give yourself a permission to do what you believe in, what you are passionate about, allow yourself to give what you have to give in this moment however much or little it may be, and give to others the gift of yourself, just as you are. Do not wait with doing things until you can do them perfectly, or even more importantly do not wait until you are ''perfect'' (if such thing even exist), because if you wait for that perfection you might end up never doing what actually is worth doing. Even more sadly you may miss sharing with others that what is so unique and precious about you, your humanity – yourself as you really are.

In order to share myself as I really am I need to be at that point where I love myself as I am, so I need to see and accept that I, as I am, have worth and intrinsic value of just being a human with all my qualities, even those that are often seen as ''shortcomings'' rather than ''qualities.'' This also includes acceptance of and loving myself in the moments when I feel angry, grumpy, disappointed, annoyed or frustrated. It seems easy to accept and love yourself when you feel positive, when you feel as if you are effortlessly flying, everything seems to flow smoothly and you feel like you are on top of the world. What about the moments or even days when you feel stuck, when you cannot quite concentrate on anything, the more you try to do something the more it feels like pushing stones up the steep hill. In those moments it takes mindful presence to stay in touch with yourself just as you are, to accept that you are just a bit out of sync with yourself and even more so with the rest of the world. It is in those moments that we need to love ourselves the most. These are certainly kind of moments when we need to allow that love to be practised through gentle and kind acceptance of ourselves just as we are. Through staying present with our own feelings of anger, unease, sadness, and groundlessness of not knowing, but just bearing a witness to what is, without attaching to it as good or bad, without trying to fix it or make it better.

Since getting the inspiration to write this post two days ago I had a personal experience with and realisation related to the very subjects I am writing about so I wish to share that personal part as well.

Two days ago I woke up with this kind of feeling of unease, bordering on tears and not quite knowing why. I went for a walk in the beautiful sierra behind the set of houses where I live. Once I started walking among the pine trees with the sunshine on my face I just relaxed into those feeling of unease and sadness I realised that they were connected to my need for meaning and purpose as well as my need for inspiration and creativity.

I realised that I had been wanting inspiration for several days, however instead of tuning in with myself, I had been playing a ''good soldier.'' For a couple of days prior to that morning I had been diligently sitting in front of the computer trying (read ''ordering'' myself) to write a blog. I decided that writing a blog would be meaningful, as well as a useful activity to do. You see, my mind took over and decided that apart from being meaningful and useful, it will give me something to do, and anyway it was the high time I posted another blog, and on and on my mind went...

Yes, I probably was already trying to fulfil my needs for meaning, purpose, even creativity (after all writing is a creative activity). However the problem was that I was not even connected to those needs from my heart I just went head on (the pun is unintentional but I like it ) with a strategy – blog writing - that I decided would give me a chance to creatively express myself and would give me a chance to use my free time meaningfully! From this perspective now, I can see I was showing no respect for where I was at emotionally or mentally. I was not paying attention to what my feelings and needs were. That really means I was acting very unloving towards myself, not accepting where I was and how I was feeling which was rather uninspired and unproductive. I was following a recipe for complete misalignment with myself. 

It comes, therefore, as no surprise that I started writing a blog on one subject without much flow, so another idea popped up so I tried that one. I managed to write approximately half a page on each subject in space of two days switching between writing and checking my e-mail accounts, distracting myself with Facebook, making coffee, looking for something sweet to eat... Clearly this diligent sitting and making myself write was contributing neither to my need for inspiration nor creativity and it was moving me even further from bringing any meaning to my life whatsoever.

Two days went by and I had two blogs started but not finished and not even knowing where I was going with them. Despite several other little jobs done in those two days, I woke up two days ago feeling empty and sad. I did not try to cheer myself up or to push those feelings away I paid attention to them and just accepted them as they were. As I already mentioned above I recognised that these uncomfortable feelings were just messages trying to call my attention. I had enough awareness and enough self-love to say ''wait a second I need some time and solitude here to just be with myself and to allow space for any feelings, and especially needs that are being unacknowledged to come up.''

My acknowledging my feelings and needs and accepting them just as they were and my loving act of just taking time for me have already open up the flow. In addition, I got inspired as well. While I was walking through the forest I got an idea to write about acceptance and then the word love sneaked in as if to say ''hey how can you talk about acceptance especially self-acceptance without mentioning me!” So that afternoon I started this very blog about self-love and self-acceptance. This time I enjoyed putting words down and experiencing the flow. Even though I started writing this post from true inspiration and I had some passion about it I noticed that I was staying on the subject in general terms, I did not seem to be touching it up close and personal. However, in the evening when I was sharing with my partner some of the feelings and needs that I experienced earlier in the day, a little light went on and it became clear to me; the inspiration to write about these two subjects: self-acceptance and self-love, came to me because that is exactly what I was needing to give to myself, exactly what I missed in previous days.

Once I started accepting me as I was I allowed the flow of love (which is always inside of us) to emerge, which in turn was enabling the beauty of needs for meaning, purpose and inspiration to be fully alive, acknowledged and consequently fulfilled in the process.

I could not help but smile at yet another realisation of how perfect the life always is and how all that we ever need is right there inside of us waiting to be discovered and ''allowed'' to flow.

Thank you for reading and please forward it to those who you think can benefit from it.

Please leave a comment, if this article has touched you in any way.