Corona stopped us from consuming, it stopped us as well from travelling. Yet, if we are about to step back in the world, we must reflect on every step we are about to take, for us, for others, and for the planet.

Connected City

The reason why Covid-19 became an international pandemic was because of our hyperconnected world. The virus travelled together with people out of Wuhan, China, all over the world. Wuhan is an 11-million city, with a buzzing global trade centre.

Moreover, the virus broke out one month before the Chinese New Year would result in the largest annual human migration. For January 2020 the Chinese government expected 79 million trips to be taken by plane and 440 million by train.

Connected Mind

The virus started in Wuhan, but it could have started anywhere, any day. Our world is connected, and so are our hearts and minds. An open world gives us the opportunity to open up our hearts and minds for different cultures and people, we might never have heard of before. Therefore, travelling is important, exploring the world can be life changing.

On the road you’ll gain insights you’ll never find if you would have stayed at home.

It softens and hardens your heart at the same time, it makes you more compassionate, understanding and empathic, as well as more mature, toughened up, and resilient.

Relative Mind

You learn to bend with life, as life bends with you. You learn to be prepared for the unexpected while hoping for the best. You learn to speak to any person even not speaking the same language; and you learn speaking the same language doesn’t necessarily makes you understand each other more.

You learn the relativity of your own mindset, your own culture, your own perspective.

Only in the distance between you and your beloved ones and your beloved places, can arise the light that unveils the good, the bad, and the ugly of what you ever had taken for granted; of what you thought always was and always would be. Only in this distance, you can discover the abnormality of ‘normal’, the relativity of values and norms, the construction of culture.

Seeking Mind

In travelling far away from everything that you once called home, leaving behind the material elements you thought that defined you, the actions that shaped your identity, you learn that you can come home everywhere, for home is not a place, but a feeling.

Stripped of all external defining elements of your life, you learn who you really are. In the vacuum between leaving and arriving, you come closer to yourself. With every step you take away, you step up for yourself and towards yourself. With every breath of alien air you take, you breathe more yourself.

Within the silence of the unknown, you get to know yourself.

Keep in mind that there is no minimum distance you should travel, as you might have experienced in times of Corona; where you were limited to your own country or area. All over the world I’ve heard stories of people discovering new areas around them, new people, new perspectives. As long as you go out and look for the unknown, open your heart and mind for the unknown, you will get to know.

Sustainable Mind

These advantages of travelling can only be beneficial of they don’t take advantage of anything or anyone else. The world is not a gigantic zoo; a collection of artificial small universes where you pass by as a spectator.

The world is a dynamic whole of various places that people and animals call their home.

No matter how different that home looks to you, it must be respected as it was your home. No matter how different those people are from you, they must be treated as they were your loved ones. No matter how different nature looks to you, it must be treated as the precious ecosystem you would love to see your own children grow up in.

Go out in the world, explore and travel, but only in a way your behaviour could be repeated by millions of people without leaving any damage. Go out in the world, but only in a way you treat the world as your home, the people as your family, the nature as a precious gift.

If you can’t travel with this in mind, if you can’t travel with respect for others, you shouldn’t travel at all.

Go out in the world, by taking the world in your heart, or not go at all.

 

This article is part of the series of Hope in Times of Corona. Read

1. How this too shall pass
2. how this times of self-isolation should not mean loneliness,
3. how you can contribute to this battle, 
4. how gratitude lights up the dark,  
5. how united we will stand strong
6. on the most util strategy in awake of a crisis 
7. how I got blown of my feet as well, but caught by many caring hands, 
8. how being calm can get us through the storm.
9. about Love in Times of Corona
10. how to discover your own talents 
11. why we need stories to hold on to 
12. how you can be creative and innovative.
13. how to spend your mot valuable assets in times of Corona.
14. how to listen to the sound of silence. 
15. How breath taking Corona really is.
16. discover the other freedoms Corona has shown us, 
17. about the new-born freedom Corona gave us.
18. about another way to exceed your personal bubble.
19. about the position of nature in this entire story
20. about nature bouncing back
21. about the crucial choice between resilience and resistance
22. about the game to play
23. about star gazing in dark times
24. About looking for Meaning
25. About how Music Connects
26. about what Easter and Corona have in Common
27. About the Shark and the Turtle
28. About the Irony of Distance
29. Why to Hold on
30. Fake News
31. about The Big Unknown we live at
32. about Feeling Alive
33. About turning obstacles into opportunities
34. about what the Birthday of my nephew learned me about life 
35. About where we should go from here?
36. About coping with incertitude
37. About the Great War and the Great Pandemic, and we should not forget
38. about history’s most important message, echoed by corona
39. How one country could rule them all
40. About how to prevent the next Green Pandemic 
41. about how we are experiencing a new episode of our history books
42. about when the poppy flowers
43. about what’s in a number
44. masks off, how a friend in need is a friend indeed
45. What’s Next. after we flattened the curve?
46. how will our personal story look like in a post-corona world?
47. why we should never let a good crisis go too waste.
48. How Spring can happen in Autumn
49. How to unlock the lockdown
50. Why education matters
51. How we can give meaning to the meaningless deaths. (rethink health care)
52. The remarkable marketability of health, or not?
53. the remarkable rewards of health
54. The queeste for global health care 
55. Health Heroes
56. Pains and Gains 
57. Solidarity 3.0
58. Work-Life Balance
59. Home sweet home
60. Real Connections
61. Leadership 3.0
62. gratitude 3.0
63. Respect 3.0
64. Humanity 3.0
65. Change Management
66. Economic Catharsis
67. To consume or not to consume?

Or wait until tomorrow, when I’ll shine another light on yet another positive corner of this dark time.