As a traveler, one’s travels can take one of two paths. Either there is a change of destination from beginning to end, in which case the travel marks a new beginning where someone changes their base from the familiar to the unfamiliar, or at least from one location to another, or one comes full circle by returning to where one has left. In the first case, the nature of the change is easy to see. The process of uprooting oneself from familiar places to travel somewhere else to live is an obvious change. Yet at the same time, the travel that one undertakes often changes people within even if there is no change in their particular location. To some extent, we are no longer the same people after we return from our travels that we were before.

At times, this is intentional. For example, I just recently returned from a considerably ambitious trip in which my mother and I visited a variety of territories, most of which had some sort of issues of identity within their areas or between those areas and others. The Azores were among the first colonies of the Portuguese and remain a part of that country, although an autonomous one. Morocco was itself a colony of both the Spanish and French, and as soon as it was able, it took over another region in the Western Sahara whose population has remained indigestible. Gibraltar is a small British fortress whose land access is completely dominated by the Spanish. Catalonia yearns to be free, openly expressing its desire for independence on its buildings while struggling to unite in some fashion with the other parts of Catalonia that have been broken off over centuries of Spanish misrule and more gracious French treatment. Both Andorra and Monaco serve as microstates which are viewed as independent nations but which clearly depend on their larger neighbors for some functions, as is also true of the Vatican City. Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily serve as autonomous regions of France with varying desires for freedom. Malta is a land dominated by its experience as a besieged but triumphant island state inhabited by a small people speaking the only Semitic official language in Europe. Cyprus is a land deeply divided between its connections to the EU and Russia, to its identity as both a European and Levantine state, besides its Greek-speaking Christian south and its Turkish-speaking nominally Muslim north, separated from each other but each pursuing the same development as a wealthy refuge for outsiders.

Yet not all changes that result from travel are intentional. Travel can lead one to insights about one’s character that are not always flattering. Travel can be tiring, and can reveal certain rigidity or certain irritability that may hinder one’s ability to enjoy one’s company or where one happens to be. Travel can reveal one’s limitations in ways that demonstrate what is or what is not feasible or reasonable. One can have a desire to do many things but simply lack the physical ability to do it, whether with regards to energy or health. Additionally, one can find patterns in one’s travels that are not intentionally sought out. One can see the world as a tense and restive place full of people on edge, and can recognize that the problems one sees in one’s own land with regards to authorities and how they are viewed can seem like universal human problems when viewed from the perspective of others, manifested in a variety of different ways. One nation’s government can be corrupt, siphoning funds from the people for personal use, while in another area a government may seek to suppress a local culture’s minority language, while in another area, peace may be maintained through the presence of armed troops.

Ideally, travel exposes us to the complex reality of the unity of people despite our diversity. Foreigners may speak many languages, and have very different levels of development within their countries or very different cultural traditions with regards to food, dance, fashion, music, literature, to name a few areas where nations may differ widely. Yet at the same time, people often have very similar struggles and may also have very similar longings to be free and successful, to seek an escape from intolerable situations, and to connect with others while also separating oneself from others. In traveling, we see how it is that foreigners live, and see ourselves as the stranger and foreigner in novel contexts. In so doing, we better recognize the struggles that people have to get along with us even as we struggle to get along in new lands, helped by a good attitude, some friendliness and insight, and the way that tourism brings much-appreciated income to areas that appreciate it. But ultimately, while the expatriate seeks to live abroad, the tourist returns home to enjoy the comforts of the familiar once more.