Feb 25th 09

If you spent all your time wandering around the world, gasping at everything and saying, “How wonderful! How amazing! I’ve woken up after a 100 million centuries, what a trip!”, people would think you were a bit odd, and you might even get arrested. We do, of course, have an ordinary life to get on with, we do have a living to earn. We’ve got to earn our living being a solicitor, a lavatory cleaner, or something like that. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile, from time to time, shaking off the anesthetic of familiarity, and awakening to the wonder that is really all around us all the time. So, how are we going to shake off the anesthetic?

We can’t actually go to another planet, but fortunately we do not need to. Because we can go to regions of our own planet which are so unfamiliar that it almost might be another planet.

Richard Dawkins in Waking Up in the Universe

I have had the fortune of traveling to many distant countries, including New Zealand, the Czech Republic, Greece, and Turkey. As such, I can say that Dawkins perfectly describes the experience of visiting new regions of the planet as “shaking off the anesthetic of familiarity.” Many people that have the means to travel afar never do because they’re afraid to draw out the IV and wake up in a new, less familiar world. It’s too bad, because it’s one of the most valuable experiences I’ve had. Leaving the country not only demolished my egocentric tendency to think of my life in the States as “normal,” but also gave me a humbling perspective of my place in the world.

To this day, the memories of my travels help me shake off the anesthetic of familiarity and remember how beautiful this planet, this universe, really is, and how privileged I am to have had the chance to visit, even if for but a fleeting moment in time.