a short philosophy of travel

Something about travel gradually opens up places in my mind and spirit that often I am too busy in day to day life to notice.
I regret now that I never learned much about world history. How did I manage to go through high school and college and never really get more than a whiff of names like Tamerlane, Genghis Khan, Justinian and so many others? At the time they all seemed like just some facts to memorize but now I see better the threads connecting all of them and us, and would so much appreciate being able to better assimilate it all into a beautiful tapestry rather than a jumbled knot of threads. I know that tapestry is there, but the task of untangling all the threads and making sense of it now seems quite daunting.  There's a book I saw once-it was quite thick-sort of an overview of the history of humankind on this earth. There's a great choice for a book club/history lesson! 
Traveling makes me look for knowledge and context to what I see, it makes geography come alive and suddenly countries and places I could never have placed on a map, I now can.  It really is an education in so many ways.  I know I only scratch the surface with my little 2 week trips, but the richness I get hints of!
Like most of you who are reading this blog, I too have already chosen my life path.  The years slide by so quickly and as far as I know, we only get 1 life and just so many choices.  I don't regret my life; I am so appreciative that I was born in a country in which I DO get the choices, enough to eat, opportunities that are really mostly self limited and freedom beyond what most of the world knows-particularly women of the world.
What I regret is the lost opportunities to know, to really grasp knowledge and assimilate it into my life.  I have no one to blame but myself, I know.
Now I have a sense of the finiteness of my own life that I could never have had at 20, and I want to grasp life with both hands and wring every last drop of the juice out of it that I can.
So...law school, challenging work, people I love and who care for me, travel to places that stretch me and push me, and progress on my own spiritual path.  Life won't be boring, will it?!