stepping over the threshold

Pico Iyer talks about travel, and what it is, in a book I'm reading - the prospect of stepping out of the daylight of all I know and into the shadows of what I don't know, and in the process becoming "newly attentive to the details of the world..." I like the way travel to a place that is foreign pulls me out of myself, gives me new perspective and somehow hits the reset button. By foreign I don't necessarily mean outside the U.S., I'm speaking more of a way of living and a different approach than I am familiar with. This falls in line for me with the idea that we need the weirdos in the world-they make us re-think how we view life and those around us. It's very easy to fall in line with the current way of thinking, there is tremendous pressure to do just that: whether it's how we educate our children, how we keep our house, or any number of things. Society makes the different among us pay. I think that's probably human nature at work, but that does not excuse a lack of trying to do better in this. In some way travel helps me to do this. As Pico says, it's a useful corrective to what we might otherwise assume to be real life. This facade we have built is no better and no worse, probably, than that of any culture or any time. Human kindness and inhumanity abound. But travel helps me remember that there are indeed other ways. And I think that's useful because I forget very quickly once back in my own place.