Many great writers in the past were wanderers. Best example is that of a great greek philosopher Plato, who left Athens when his teacher Socrates was poisoned to death and came back at the age of 40 to write his greatest work ever The Republic.
He traveled across lands and went to as far as Egypt (a great distance at that time). It was all during his journey that he thought about things he wrote in his book, which inspired generations to come.
Traveling provided him an influential escape from turmoils of his own city life to think about issues from quite a different perspective, thus igniting the creative potential of his genius mind.
Now come back to modern times.
It’s not that hard for the millennial generation to imagine itself sitting in a cubicle 40 hours a week, trying to make the loop they are stuck in produce something out of the ordinary. And does that work?? May be one in a ten thousand of times it does. The rest of the times we are just feeding our brain a sort of repetitive frenzy of thoughts that in no way inspires us to think out of the box because doing that is against the mainstream rational way of living life. We have in a way institutionalized ourselves to follow the herd.
To break this loop one needs to travel and enter a cycle where new thoughts can dwell upon mind. Traveling lets you do three things to push the limits of your creative mind. These are:
The Ignition of Creativity
It is quite ironical that the greatest invention the prehistoric man ever made was for the sole purpose of making traveling easy, providing a fountainhead for later inventions to follow.
But the creativity of the common man has its origin someplace else. It is in that active search of finding where he stands against nature─to make him visible of the great variety of phenomenality that nature has to offer─and which brings back the man to his roots; so as to let him know that there are still miles to be traveled, some far places to be reached and mountains to be conquered before he can take rest.
This realization of the grandeur of nature against the diminutiveness of man is what inspires him to be broad in scope and magnificent in size, just as nature is.
Nature is man’s vantage point to be a creative genius because there isn’t anything more creative than nature itself.
Traveling Makes You Learn Nature’s Language
This is the telltale sign of a creative genius. He knows the significance of everything small and large:
He knows that a leaf falls so that seasons can change, seasons change so that man can learn to endure this change and the man who has endured change for long can cross the sky because he was born inside a star.
He sees this hidden order in everything. He is so grounded to nature that for him natural phenomena are a way to signify human emotion and that’s why he will never leave that first call to go back and dip in that natural basket once again to rise and produce something different. That is to become creative.
Steve jobs traveled to himalayas to get his dose of creativity and it is believed that it was here that he got that vision to create Apple.
You can also look at my article: Creative ways in which successful leaders get things done.
Traveling Lets You Spread Your Fire & Let it Burn
The smallest spark can burn a forest yet that spark is useless to ignite fire at the wrong place. It’s because of the environment. Maybe you need some time off to make that spark work. Remember that a spark can be anything─your love, your passion, your mistakes, your curiosity and even your stubbornness not to change the way you are. You need to put it in the right environment and let it grow itself upon you.
Traveling provides you with all that. Everything else you need is a good company and new thoughts will come to you on your own, coupled up with a sense to share your inner beliefs, no matter how weird they sounded someplace else. You will discover yourself and the world around you. And things will never be the same.
One last quote while I leave you with your own thoughts. “I think that traveling can be best described as a journey into the unknown, to meet the unknown, to know the unknown and to come back as having known yourself and the unknown.”─Anonymous.
And that’s when everything in life becomes meaningful.
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About Author
Vartika Kashyap is a seasoned marketing professional who is an expert in digital marketing and entrepreneurship. She’s been featured among LinkedIn’s Top Voices for the year 2016, and is also a contributor for The Next Web & Your Story. She currently heads the Marketing Department at ProofHub — a project management software for teams of all sizes. Connect with Vartika on LinkedIn, Medium and Twitter.
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