For example, I remember all the steep mountain roads I have walked on. Acrophobia is a treasure of human beings. It costs nothing and can make people excited. I can remember the whole process of how my acrophobia developed from nothing to something, from mild to severe. I can remember the aqueducts in the mountains, the stone walls that cannot be climbed, and other abominable arrangements. I clearly remember sitting in my friend's car in the Hengduan Mountains, desperately twisting the door handle, as if that would do anything. Every morning before getting up and setting off, I felt extremely heavy-hearted, and when I got off the car in the evening, I was so grateful to God. I can't forget a section of road in the fog. I was feeling proud, but suddenly the sun leaked out, and I was so scared that I immediately went the other way because I saw the cliff outside the road. At home, after an idle and helpless day, I sometimes find some fun for myself in the evening. Recalling the terrible roads I have passed by can always scare me to the point of curling up, and the degree is not much less than the actual situation. These memories will undoubtedly be with me for the rest of my life, ensuring that no matter how old I am in the future, my adrenal glands will always be young.
Tenth, love your family. What is your favorite moment when traveling? There is no uniform answer to this kind of question, because every trip is more or less special, and it is for this purpose here and for that purpose there.
I used to think that for long-distance travel, the moment of departure is my favorite. Whether it is a spur of the moment or a long-planned trip, it is always fresh to hit the road. If I travel by car, I am used to leaving early in the morning, sneaking out in the dark before everyone has time to block the road and good mood. At this time, I feel happy and nervous. Traveling itself is exciting, but leaving familiar things, family and city, even if it is only for a while, will also make people feel guilty. Although there are some plans in advance, they are just self-deception. I have never done anything according to the plan. Although the place I go to is not much different from the city I am familiar with, whether it is people or things, and I don’t expect to encounter anything new, the half-true, half-false, long-lost strange feeling is still exciting. This complicated mood will continue until dawn, when there are more cars on the road, and then everything will be the same as usual, and there will be no extra feelings. But the first one or two hours are still wonderful and memorable.
But slowly I began to doubt that maybe I would prefer the day I returned home. One time, I was really exhausted, my mood gradually turned bad, my interest was worn out, and finally I walked to Shennongjia, and I didn't even want to go up the mountain. I lay in the hotel looking at the map, pretending to make plans to continue moving forward, but my finger could not help but point north. It was a very unsuccessful trip. Everything I saw on the road had long since shed its disguise, revealing its true face that I see every day in daily life. Even the beautiful scenery and false drama could not save it. So I struggled with frustration and unwillingness to admit failure. As a result, I turned back to Shaanxi. After struggling for a week, I finally decided to go home. On that last day, I felt so relaxed and drove so fast.
When you return home, you will naturally feel lost again. So you go out again, and rush home again, and the cycle repeats itself. This is the beauty of travel. What could be more attractive than the things in the water, the moon in the mirror, the things that are in front of you and disappear behind you, and are there when you look at them but disappear when you hold on to them? If the purpose of traveling can be fully achieved, there will always be a final trip that will make people never want to go out again. Fortunately, there are some wonderful things in human nature that cannot be obscured by our infinite stupidity or limited wisdom.
In recent years, during the long holidays, the highways have been free, and a large number of people have traveled. I can squat at the intersection in my imagination and imagine that I can see people's psychology on the first and last days, and see the oscillation of the self, between the two poles of the inner and the outer world, expansion and contraction, contraction and expansion. If I can see this in more people, I will not be so ashamed.
Once, I rushed home as if I was running for my life, which was quite shameless. When I woke up in the morning, I was still in Songfan County, Sichuan. I had breakfast like a normal person, went around the inner city, and then got on the road. Before noon, I passed Jiuzhaigou and glanced at it. I didn't stop. After entering Longnan area, I calmed down while eating lunch and thought I should go to Wudu. If there was nothing new, I could go to Lueyang, which I was familiar with and liked, to stay for a few days. It was a good idea, but the car stubbornly took me south, to Wenxian. I was torn between myself and myself for the whole afternoon. Sometimes I felt like a clown running home like this, and sometimes I felt that I was a clown only if I was barely holding on. The two clowns fought to Guangyuan, and it was already evening. At this time, I had already admitted defeat in my heart. It was the next morning when I arrived in Foping. It was the first time I passed Foping without stopping. I crossed the Qinling Mountains, got on the highway immediately, and ran home in one breath.
It was already early morning on the third day when I got home and was welcomed by my family and cat. It was still comfortable at home. I thought, I am really a homebody. Only at home can I lie on the bed and think about my next trip.
Sit and talk
Emerson famously mocked travel: "It is because of the lack of self-cultivation that people are so superstitious about travel that they worship Italy, Britain, and Egypt as gods. Until now, all educated Americans are still eager to travel... The soul is by no means a wandering travel enthusiast. The wise man never leaves his house. If it is necessary and obligatory for him to leave his home or go to a foreign country on any occasion, he has no complaints, but he seems to still stay at home, and he also uses his facial expressions to make people realize that he is spreading wisdom and virtue, visiting cities and people like a king, not like a peddler or servant who muddles through.
"Please note that I do not dogmatically oppose traveling around the world for the sake of art, for the sake of study, and for charity. If a person prefers home first and does not go abroad in the hope of acquiring knowledge higher than that which he already possesses, then let him do so. But if he travels for pleasure, to obtain something that he does not have, then he travels away from himself and mixes himself with antiques, and even the best years of youth will soon become corrupt and old. In Thebes and Palmyra, his will and his heart have become like those cities, old and ruined. He brings ruins into ruins.
"For fools, travel is the happiest paradise. Our first journey made us discover that for us, place is of no importance. At home, I dreamed that in Naples, in Rome, I could be intoxicated by the ocean of beauty and lose my sadness. I packed my suitcase, hugged my friends, boarded the ship and finally woke up in Naples, next to the harsh facts, the same sad self that I had escaped from, unyielding. I looked for the Vatican and those palaces. I pretended to be intoxicated by the scenery and associations, but in fact, I was never intoxicated. Wherever I went, my giant accompanied me." (Tu Long's translation)
Emerson's philosophy does not have a complete system. When an idea comes to his mind, he is used to letting it run wild without a system to constrain it. Many times, he speaks quite casually, but it seems that his criticism of travel is serious, because the same view is published in more than one place. For example, he once said that American culture will eventually attract people who travel just because they have no place to spend their money, so that they can stay at home honestly, because facts have long proved that the farther they are from their hometown, the farther they are from honesty.
To summarize his views, first, wise men never leave their homes, unless it is for the purpose of spreading knowledge (not for learning); second, the last sentence of the quotation, My giant goes with me wherever I go, "my giant" should refer to "the same sad self", that is, the major issues in the nature of life, which cannot be avoided or answered by traveling.
Yeah?
First of all, Emerson's sarcasm can sometimes resonate with us. We ourselves, more or less, are all such travelers - no, tourists. It's just that we don't have enough ability to create fun in daily life, so we put our hopes on foreign countries, as if the people and life there are significantly different from us. We all have such moments, maybe you don't, but I do. Suddenly, I feel bored, look at myself in the mirror, and say to myself as if I have just discovered it, "It turns out that I am such a boring person." Or, if I am not so harsh on myself, I will say: "The boring life makes an originally interesting person boring." So we put raincoats, toothpaste and other things into the bag and set off, fully believing that we will become interesting in another meaningful scene. We imagine unheard-of things in foreign places, adventures on the journey, all kinds of interesting people, and interesting conversations. These are all things that always happen in literary books. If they are not actually the case, we exaggerate every little thing we encounter to make it fit our imagination.
So, we wandered around in a bustling crowd. Every place that was worth seeing, not to mention those "tourist resorts", was crowded with boring people like us. This summer, because of road construction, I turned south from Luhuo and took the famous highway from Xinduqiao to Chengdu. "Oh my God, look at these people." Across from me, from east to west, tourists' cars were lined up end to end, smoke and dust were rising, and the horns were shaking the earth. In a few hours, I saw thousands of people, anxious and excited, with bright clothes, maps and heroic words painted on the bodies of their cars. I laughed at them loudly, but I didn't realize that I was laughing at the pot calling the kettle black. In their eyes, I was exactly the same. I think it's people like us who Emerson dislikes.
However, I believe that good things in the world are not always, in fact, most of them are not, born out of pure noble motives. From ancient times to the present, people who travel on the road have all kinds of thoughts, most of which are practical, a small part are fancy, and some go to rob, kill and burn. But if human beings are not so restless, if everyone sticks to their homes, where would civilization come from? The Tang people said it well, "Without the knowledge of traveling and seeing widely, there is only the burden of extreme stupidity and vulgarity." Take a look at the history of human ideas, and then take a look at the TV news, where there are all kinds of narrow views of modern people on their own kind, and the terrible deeds that accompany them. We may admit that after thousands of years of civilization, we are still a rather despicable group, and at the same time admit that if there is no increasingly extensive interpersonal and intergroup communication, we will be ten thousand times more despicable than we are now.
St. Augustine said that the world is a book, and if you stay at home, you have only read one page. Looking back at the 1970s, how many absurd views did people like me who closed their eyes and ears have? They only read one page of the book, which was tampered with, and thought that the world was just like that; and after the "reform and opening up", there was communication, and various malpractices gradually melted away like snow in the sun. No matter how imprisoned the mind is, no matter how deep the prejudice is, people have the ability to make the phenomena they see more complicated and chaotic, and the more opportunities they have to get closer to the correct answer to things. So it is not surprising that the rulers of ancient my country always instinctively wanted to prohibit scholars and people from traveling. Their intentions even had noble motives, but many bad things in the world have noble motives.
Confucius himself traveled around the countries, advocating "friends with many knowledgeable people", but at the same time he said, "Enjoying leisure and traveling is detrimental." Like Emerson, he had a complicated attitude towards this issue. Someone should really ask him, if people don't "visit" everywhere, where does "knowledgeable" come from? There are countless times in history when people have confined themselves to the darkness of their minds for hundreds and thousands of years, doing many terrible things, but they always break free in the end, not because of the guidance of reason, because at that time, reason was covered with dust and was full of confidence, leading everyone into the ditch. It was all kinds of irregular things in life, new and strange phenomena, one or two crazy ideas, a few ships of foreign goods, malicious rumors, and most importantly, the unknown curiosity of human beings. These things collude and push little by little until the huge structure built with power and prejudice collapses.
Emerson's opinion should sound familiar to Chinese people. Indian and Chinese philosophy had some influence on Emerson, but because there is no concrete evidence, we don't know whether there is any origin in this regard. Mencius of China said "All things are in me", and he was honest and sincere. Zhu Xi explained that "all things" are not the traces of all things, but the principles of all things. So how can they be "all in me"? Chen Chun, a student of Zhu Xi and a Neo-Confucianist, has two lines of poetry:
"If you lose your conscience, you will die. Why do you enjoy traveling?" According to him, those of us who travel around have very bad consciences.
However, Zhu Xi's school is still quite human and practical. Chen Chun once criticized Lu Jiuyuan's school: "Xiangshan's school does not study books or explore the truth, but only practices meditation." People like you and me, whether in heaven or hell, if we meet Lu Xiangshan who claims that "the universe is my heart, and my heart is the universe", it is better to stay away from him to avoid being scolded by him. Think about it, even Zhu Xi's school is just a fragmented business in his eyes. Lu Xiangshan has a famous saying: "There is nothing outside the Tao, and there is no Tao outside of things. If there are other discussions, other tendencies, other actions, other industries, and other achievements apart from these, then they have nothing to do with the Tao. They are things, they are greed, and we are trapped by them. If we say them, they are heresy, and if we see them, they are heresy." In other words, the ultimate truth of the world, the true meaning of everything, and the bright future of mankind are originally hidden in our own hearts. To seek true knowledge, we only need to irradiate ourselves with the X-ray of seeking the Tao. This is called "seeking the Tao from outside." When we travel, read more, spread gossip, browse the Internet, and even visit overseas websites, this is called "seeking the Tao far away when it is near." The result is that we are blinded by greed and heresy, and we deserve to go to prison for reflection.
Dr. Johnson said simply that travel can "correct" imagination. Instead of thinking about how things are all day long, it is better to get up and see how things are. Johnson is famous for common sense, and it is not in vain. People are easily addicted and fall into a rut when they sit at home and think about random things. If you associate with concepts all day long, it is dangerous. You forget the actual phenomena and lose sympathy for human affairs. Then it is easy to have evil views and evil doctrines. Of course, there is a benefit of meditating happily. The more you think, the more you feel that you are amazing. To borrow Lu Jiuyuan's poem, "Look up and look outside the sky, there is no one like me." The world is the best, invincible, and you can hit an airplane with a stone. It is applicable everywhere.
Although Emerson spoke casually, he never indulged in excessive thoughts throughout his life. He read a lot of books, made many insightful friends, enjoyed talking to people, and whether he liked it or not, he traveled frequently. From walking in the Connecticut River Valley when he was young to giving speeches everywhere after he became famous, he traveled all over the United States. Emerson, who criticized "worshiping Italy, Britain, and Egypt as gods", he had been to all three countries, some more than once.
The second time he went to England, Emerson wrote a long travelogue. In the first chapter, he consoled himself by saying that he was not happy to go to England, and was not very good at traveling. He had never felt comfortable on long trips. However, since he had received an invitation, he had some free time, and he was tired of reading, so he needed some change and excitement, so he decided to go.
Yes, then go ahead. Traveling does not require great or noble motives, perfect planning, or even wise foresight. To sell things, to buy things, to visit relatives, to have a blind date, to show off, to stop others from showing off, to arrive, to leave, to clear up confusion, to relieve boredom, or even just to enjoy the free roads during festivals. If you don't go on the road, you will be sad. As long as you go on the road, you will join a glorious cause that benefits mankind. Moreover, although it doesn't happen often, there is a chance to make a profit.
As for the question of the essence of life that Emerson was obsessed with, if he could not find the answer outside, he would have less chance of achieving it at home. Moreover, it is not only a personal problem, but also a human problem. If there is an answer, it must be far beyond the boundaries of human knowledge. Only by constantly pushing the boundaries can we have hope of getting closer. Although the traveler himself has nothing to gain, it is beneficial to future generations.
James few days ago, rock singer David Bowie passed away. His most famous song was "Space Maniac", which mocked the space program. Five days after the song was released, "Apollo 11" landed on the moon. We need David Bowie, and we also need "Apollo 11". If we plan for the future, it seems that we need "Apollo 11" more.
Speechlessness and Aphasia
Once in Fujian, I gave an old man a ride to a town a few kilometers away. When I arrived in a place where I couldn't understand the local dialect, I was more silent than usual. This was a lesson learned. In the past, I often asked locals for directions, but the results were always unsatisfactory. The more the other party wanted to explain clearly, the more confused I became. The more enthusiastic the other party was, the more anxious I was to leave, because the little judgment I had was disappearing in this complicated conversation. I said thank you, pretended to smile, and left more lost than when I started. I was just unsure before, but now I was completely lost.
But this old man could speak some official language, so we chatted along the way and didn't talk about different things. The old man told me that he went to the town to fight... "Fight what?" I forgot my lesson and asked unfortunately.
I need to add that the names of things in dialect are the most difficult to understand. I once asked someone about the types of fruit trees. After talking for a long time, I still didn't know whether the other person was talking about lychees, plums, chestnuts or pears. So it's not surprising that the old man's answer sounded like this to me:
"Beat the bad guys."
I was silent. Fearlessness in the face of danger and responsibility are qualities I admire. However, I glanced at the man next to me. He looked older than me, at least 70 years old, and one of his legs was lame (otherwise he might not have taken my ride). Since he was a bad guy, it seemed okay to beat him up, but is it true that the countryside is so empty that these things that require strength must be done by the elderly? I was angry for a while, and said carefully: "You can just give the orders, don't do it yourself, what if you can't win?"
"It doesn't matter." The old man said, "It's just for fun. You're happy if you win, and you're also happy if you lose." I was a little touched. Although I don't know the customs in this area, I know that in our area, bad guys are not beaten for fun. I expressed this opinion cautiously, and the old man smiled: "It's not the bad guys who are beaten, it's the nephew."
It turned out that I had misheard, and I felt relieved. Beating my nephew was less risky, but I felt that I was involved in something. You see, sending people to the town to beat my nephew, no matter what the reason, is always a bit unsettling. Before I could think of what to say, we arrived at the town. The old man got off the car and limped towards a group of people on the street. They were probably the same age as him, sitting around a small table. When they saw him coming, they all greeted him, and then he sat down.
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