Travel as Teacher

I'm writing this post from my studio apartment just after sun has set. This morning I walked to my car, drove to work, worked inside of my office, drove home. I've spent less than 15 minutes outside today and a total of zero minutes in a physical environment that is not familiar to me.

Just as the stickiness of immobility was collecting on my skin I clicked one... more... link... and arrived at these terrific short films:

Move

MOVE from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

Learn

LEARN from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

Eat

EAT from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

A friend was telling me about a trip she had taken with a person who complained that every tourist-trap-outing was something done better from the comfort and relative inexpensiveness of her home city. On the face of it, this is likely true. Most cosmopolitan cities have museums, and performance, and food, and classes, and heck if you were determined: a chance to interact with exotic animals. However, and I don't think I'm alone on this, when I'm at home I stay at home. I don't often find myself taking advantage of the delights that a traveler to my city might revel in.

Every once in a while, and perhaps more often than that, we need to place ourselves in environments that challenge us to leave what is comfortable and take in all that is around us. Travel is a shortcut to those experiences, and the above films make that abundantly clear. Travel forces us to move, eat, and learn.