For many, traveling is considered a hobby, or even a personality trait. Some travel for pleasure and others for work, but it is undeniable that by doing both you gain some knowledge of something new you didn’t know before. Personality changes while visiting a place you have never been before, you open your mind to new experiences and get to look at new cultures and places with a new and refreshed set of eyes.
“Abroad is the place where we stay up late, follow impulse and find ourselves as wide open as when we are in love. We live without a past or future, for a moment at least, and are ourselves up for grabs and open to interpretation. We even may become mysterious — to others, at first, and sometimes to ourselves” -Pico Iyer
These characteristics that we see present in the act of travelling are very similar to characteristics in the romantic era. Romanticism makes an emphasis on individuality and personal freedom, these characteristics are some of the reasons many travel. Personally when I travel I enjoy spending time by myself, getting to know and trying to fully understand myself. According to romantics we experience the sublime when we are out in nature, in other words out in the unknown. Every time you get the luxury to travel to a new country or area you get to experience the sublime aspect of discovering, in other words pursuit of knowledge.
Like Pico Iyer stated in his TED Talk,
“In the end, perhaps, being human is much more important than being fully in the know.”
Traveling is made to dive into uncertainty and fear in order to discover this new knowledge. Because maybe it’s fine to not know everything, and as we get to live we will understand the sublime of discovering new things.
3 replies on “Traveling and The Romantic Era ”
I like how you linked traveling to something that can change a person’s personality. I agree with this, I also think that your personality can be changed from experiencing new cultures and different ways people are living. It was cool to see how you learned more about yourself while you were traveling. In my opinion, this is one of the best reasons to travel, it gives us a chance to escape our routine world and experience new things that ultimately change us and make us grow. Another thing in your blog that I enjoyed is the correlation between Iyer’s writing and Romanticism. The end of your writing really stuck with me because I find it very valid and its a good reason to travel.
I love that you focused this on traveling by yourself. I think it can be overlooked sometimes, and I agree that it’s definitely one of the best ways to learn more about yourself. As you mentioned, these ideas of gaining knowledge from other cultures goes along with the Romantic era of traveling, but I think it could also fit into the Reinassance era. Here, they traveled for personal growth, which is exactly what you’re mentioning. I think your last quote is really impactful and a great note to end on, it leaves the reader thinking and reflecting about what you said.
This was a very insightful post. I enjoyed the way you broke it up into talking about the way Iyer describes traveling and then how you related back to yourself and compared it to Iyer. You talked about how traveling changes your personality which I agree with as depending on where you go you can see many different things and encounter numerous experiences. Then I liked how you described your way of traveling by spending time by yourself to truly get to know yourself better.