Over the last few years my wife and I have been doing a lot of traveling. The long-distance traveling on a regular basis started in around 1991 when we went on umrah to Mecca, and then we started going every year after that for about 10 years. Then we started traveling after 9/11 to other parts of the world. We go to Turkey regularly, we go to California regularly, we go to Canada regularly, in the winter we go to the Caribbean regularly.
But some of the things that you notice when traveling is that if you really look and don’t stay really self-contained, you notice a divergence in the way people think. A divergence in peoples’ attitudes, and a different set of circumstances as to daily life almost wherever you go. And it occurred to me that one of the goals, one of the things that going on pilgrimage does for you is it changes your view, literally. When you’re at home you look around and you see one thing, and if you live in a stable environment, like most of us do here. If you walk out your front door or your back door, or you walk around your block, you see the same thing every day, it doesn’t change.
When you go further, things are not as familiar. The first time I went to Mecca it was like going to Mars, not only wasn’t it familiar, it was so unfamiliar that it kind of threw me for a loop. It told me that not only are there points of view that are different than yours, and there are scenarios that are different than what you see, there are points of view you don’t imagine, and there are scenarios that you haven’t imagined. And there are scenes that you didn’t think possible.
I remember driving down a street in Mecca and there were all these little stalls which were, in fact, stores and at night they were lit by one 60-watt light bulb hanging from the ceiling, and people were doing commerce out of there. Each of these places were one-man shops selling one specific item which I probably never saw when I was home.
Having this kind of a shock to your ever day thought pattern, and having this kind of a shock to your usual accustomed way of seeing and doing things shakes you up a little bit. But that’s the point.
The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said, “Travel even unto China for knowledge.”
Could He have meant that traveling unto China in itself will bring you knowledge? Think about it; that kind of traveling is going to induce encounters that you’ve never had before, is going to induce things that happen that you’ve never seen before, and it will take the parameters of your imagination and show you how limited they are, and how reality is larger than they are…
