While I was nursing a particularly virulent strain of post-grad school wanderlust, I received a card in which was written simply: Caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt. It was Horace, and can translate from the Latin as: They change the sky, not their soul, who run across the sea. The sentiment struck me as narrow-minded and thoroughly disheartening. Journeys were for opening minds, finding oneself! I tucked the note away, I continued to travel; the card giver received postcards from Bhutan, India, and Portugal in reply.
Flash forward to Montevideo early this May, and to a classroom management brainstorming session with some American teachers who recently started working in a Uruguayan elementary school. One of the struggling teachers leaned back and sighed. “The novelty’s worn off,” he said. “Sometimes my days are just…the same.”
When we go abroad, particularly as part of a program, we expect a strain of exoticism to buoy us along. It can, at first. Life will be different in the new place, and accompanied by resolutions as varied as avoiding getting plastered by a mototaxi and taking a photo a day. The day comes when the learning curve levels off, however, and living abroad becomes simply: living, and where’s the travel? The challenges and thrills of this new place give way to the quotidian exigencies of life lived as you would live it anywhere in the world. We always need to do laundry.
Punta del Diablo, Uruguay
Shortly afterward I at long last hunted down the rest of Horace’s epistle, which it turns out I’d slightly misinterpreted from the fragment. Horace elaborates: “It’s wisdom, it’s reason, not some place / Overlooking a breadth of water, that drives out care.” Despite evidence that travel itself increases wisdom, I’m also reminded of a favorite WorldTeach volunteer, one who never actually left for his assigned program. In the course of completing his pre-departure volunteer ESL hours, he realized that his local Texas community could benefit as much from his services as a faraway Ecuador one.
It’s important to travel, but it is also important to occasionally stop, and let your mind and heart engage as much with stillness as with motion. The moments of quiet engagement are what allow us to refocus our perception of our surroundings from the mirage of exotic to the real. Our own mindfulness, not the mere act of journeying, is what changes us. In the coming weeks, thousands of new college graduates will set off on adventures, along with thousands more traveling for the summer. I suppose I write this all just to say: go! But reflect on Horace while you pack your bags, and don’t forget the sunscreen.
Flora Lindsay-Herrera is currently a Fulbright Fellow in Montevideo, Uruguay. For more about her experiences, check out her blog.
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Hello from a fellow Idealist writer! I recently thought about what sets us on the road and absolutely loved reading your thoughts on motion vs. stillness. What a wonderful post!
Thanks gals! But I haven’t found wisdom yet….I still haven’t figured out how to effectively handwash my socks (!)
Flora,
great post. I love the concept of “we always need to do laundry.”
So true!
¨Our own mindfulness, not the mere act of journeying, is what changes us.¨
… you have, indeed, found wisdom in your travels!