So throughout my trip to Taiwan and all around the island, I had some thoughts strike me that I thought I’d put out there for others to ponder. I thought I was clever by using the combination of the words “travel and “philosophy” but I think it probably just confused most people. In any event, some may be considered “true philosophical” questions, others merely wonderings of an active mind while on the road. Anyway, here is the collection as I wrote it while travelling through Taiwan:
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Isn’t travel an exercise in finding some quiet to oneself? To imbibe in the drug of observation of the other? To be foreign, unknown and not knowing?
In seeing the buildings of Old Taipei, what makes a building historical? Is it not just its very survival?
Why do these people come here? What’s so special about us?
To ride, to go, to simply see. There must be more than just what’s here.
Are those who travel unhappy with where they were born?
When have you ‘seen’ a place?
Which is the eye to follow: human or mechanic?
In order to expedite something, it’s often better to prepare for it not to happen.
People say that every seven years every single cell is replaced in your body. Does that mean only after seven years you can call some place home?
When someone asks a traveller what they want to eat, what are they expecting to hear?
In seeing THAT place, THAT thing, THAT person, you realize just how momentous life is. At once it is there, at once it is not.
What is a traveller but someone who rents a bed as they go and eats what’s available?
What seems like a great shot after a few, may not be the case in the edit suite.
What is more sustainable: he who makes or he who buys from someone else?
What is the difference between reading the paper and flipping through socie media?
Is it just money? Which is easier: spend less or make more? Your choice, your attitude?
Which is more problematic: reading a newspaper or reading a publication online?
Why is jazz associated with cafes?
How long to linger? How long to wonder? When do you let it go? Or do you wait until it leaves you?
The problem with travelling is that you literally plan to make the most of your time. Yet once we return to our ‘normal’ lives, we let that aggressiveness go.
What is it to be blessed? Is it not just a word that denotes good fortune? But what is fortune? Luck? And what is that? When does the semantics end and the acceptance begin?
Do all of our words have to please others? And what about actions?
If one believes something that is not commonly or socially acceptable, can that person still practice spirituality?
If evolution is true, though I have little doubt, which do you hold more reverance towards: the fish or the monkey? Which took the greater risk?
Which is more productive: to think something or to do something?
What does it mean to be dignified? To see something, fix it, yet make no fuss about it no matter where, who, when, how, why, or what the situation may be?
People say things do not matter since you can’t take them with you after death. But what about experiences? Can you take those? Or people? Nothing. You take nothing. So far as we know.
What would we do without cheap places to visit? How would so many travellers get their start?
What does it mean to touch a thing? To be moved? What exactly moves us? Is it personal or can it be from outside of us?
One of the simple pleasures of returning home from abroad is that of changing clothes.
Don’t forget to look up and out the window.
Travel, as enlightenment, is just another way of showing yourself what you can do on your own.