Travelling: Discovering New Places, Meeting New People & Touching New Lives

I love travelling (who doesn’t?). Even though the “getting there” part is principally painful, I still love discovering places, tasting new cuisines and experiencing different cultures.
But even better than that, I think meeting with new people is priceless. Listening to life stories much more or little bit different than mine… That was again what happened when we had some international friends here for the weekend. These were different individuals from different countries in Europe and Middle East… They were all great people with different cultures and different life experiences. At first sight, we might have looked similar, all well-educated, well-travelled modern young people but in fact we were all different than each other and that is what makes it even more interesting and even fascinating. Of course we all had great time and we all embarked on a mutual base without paying attention to what differences we might have.

The other day, I was talking to my parents about my new friends and my mom, all of a sudden, said that how grateful I should be that I meet different people from all around the world and hence I got to know of different lives… And what she said was so true that it made me think (and even write here) about it. Whenever I speak to a foreigner, whether I’m aware or not, I end up collecting new life experiences... I feel like I am touching the lives of people that I didn’t even know they existed. I somehow meet these people and I realize how different lives exist and, like she said, I should be grateful for that – which I totally am. After all, as a young person, so far I’ve had the opportunity to know these lives and broaden my perspective with all that.

And these experiences don’t have to be full of joy and laughter every time… Just like life’s ingredients, it may involve witnessing to different and sad lives as well… Such as one day in the U.S. I was waiting for a never-arriving cab and it took me an hour standing right in front of a store until these nice black ladies offered me a ride. If I hadn’t accepted their offer, I would probably have never learnt that there were people who earn money by just babysitting and spend it extravagantly at night clubs of chic hotels. Or, maybe I wouldn't have known that the stripper mother of the kid in the car that those ladies were babysitting, had been evicted and had to live in a motel and was able to see her brain disordered son only once every 2 months, if those ladies hadn’t stopped by her motel before mine… If I had not travelled to the US and waited for a taxi in the middle of nowhere, I wouldn't have seen the sadness in that mother’s eyes, as she held her son. And I would have never seen in her face how unprepared she were when she gave birth to him and maybe thought how unfair life can be to her when she got evicted…

After what my mom said, I remembered the author I love very much, who said something very important during a TV interview. The journalist had asked her what reasons she can give to youngsters in order to urge them read books: “Why do we need to read books?” Her response was so simple but at the same time so true that I kept on smiling for minutes as she spoke… “We need to read books, in order to beware of different lives somewhere in the world. Even if we don’t know those people, we can understand what may come up in the future and we can get prepared for that. Or at least, knowing other lives enriches our minds and lives.”

This felt so true that when my mom said the same thing about meeting people, I realized that it’s no different than reading books (especially novels) and learning different lives through books. It’s just listening to or observing other’s life experiences in person, and this way it’s even less virtual: it’s real; it’s totally “live”. Just like the books help us gain perspective, I strongly believe that meeting new people enriches our lives the same way.

So I found it again very meaningful to have met these new friends. I just hope that I can always have this opportunity of meeting new people and even continuing to be in touch with them…

It’s like reading “people” instead of reading through pages. More concrete, more flesh-bone kind of real and I hope to continue “reading” people…

To all whom I encountered so far: Thank you for spicing up my life and chipping in with your stories. By donating your stories, you help me grow up and turn me into the person who I am.

And to all who are on the “encounter waitlist”: Patience… We’ll meet someday, but first we have to wait for the right time and the right place…