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Why Do We Travel?

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I am lucky to have taken some incredible trips, including a recent one to “the end of the earth”: the island of Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost point of South America. In a week, we traveled by boat and drove over 20 hours, seeing glaciers, beavers, a spotted seal, and passed two vehicles and two fishing boats. We saw more penguins than people.

One night, the dinner conversation turned to “why we travel.” Some of the others said, “because the world is a huge place and I want to see as much as I can; to learn; to feel alive.”

All good answers but one response struck me: “When you travel, you take what you learn—the values, the ways people interact—and, sometimes without even realizing it, you build it into your own behavior.”

And that got me thinking: what behaviors or ways of thinking have I brought back and incorporated into the way I interact with others? I started a list and was surprised to find I have built in more small changes........

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