| Essay excerpts
© by Beatriz Badikian-Gartler |
| The Ancients versus the Moderns Today, travel is a common occurrence. We move around the world almost as easily as we move around our own house. But this is by no means a new phenomenon. The difference, generally speaking lies in the fact that modern travel is done mostly for pleasure while the ancients traveled because they had to keep moving. According to Eric Leed, recorded history is a story of migrations and settlements, the continual search for a place to call home. ... |
... When we travel, especially if we go far away and for a long time, all our inner resources and deeply buried conflicts rise to the surface to assist us in surviving the journey. Writer Michael Crichton, for example, notes that he likes to travel to far away places to find out who he is since, stripped of the familiar places and people, he is forced to reply on himself and himself alone. On a similar vein, Albert Camus contends that, what gives value to travel is fear, not pleasure, the fear of the unknown, the unexpected. ... |