How Traveling Can Transform You
Insights from a Travel Writer and Spiritual Thinker
I had the honor of speaking with one of my favorite writers, the brilliant Pico Iyer. Raised by philosopher parents, Pico’s early encounters with spirituality set him on a lifelong quest to understand meaning, culture, and the inner workings of the human heart.
Pico and I have met a few times, including on stage in a brilliant conversation about American individualism at the Aspen Ideas Festival. I loved that session and what each of the panelists brought to it, including Pico.
I also love his new book, Aflame, in which Pico reflects on the lessons he’s learned through silence. So when I started thinking about who to bring on to the podcast next, my mind jumped immediately to Pico Iyer.
And our conversation was so lovely. We explored how travel can be more than just a journey—it can be a spiritual practice, a way to expand the soul. How stepping into the unfamiliar can quiet the mind, awaken the senses, and deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world.And how travel can be a form of meditation, a path to greater awareness, and a way to expand not just our horizons, but our very sense of being.
I’ll provide an excerpt of our conversation below. Click here if you want to listen to the full episode on Wisdom and Practice. And, of course, please rate and follow our show if you’re up for it!
Pico Iyer: I think travel liberates us from the two simple ways we define ourselves. And I realize every day when I'm walking down the street in Port au Prince, Haiti, anybody I pass doesn't care where I went to school or what I do for a living or where I live.Their only question is whether this person is kind and can I trust him? And so it brings you back to essentials, and you realize you're freed of all the superficial ways you may think of yourself and back to something essential and universal....That form of travel has reminded me in some ways that I don't have to go far at all. Um, the only important part of travel really is transformation.
Simran Jeet Singh: I mean, I've felt similarly, especially as a scholar of religion and culture...Growing up here in the states, you know, there's a very particular understanding of what the relationship is between the individual and society...And I wonder what the thread is that you're experiencing in these places. Is there something that feels like a new experience for you? Something that's been revelatory? Or is it a different version of something you've already known?
Pico Iyer: I'll begin by saying I think you are so wise and maybe fortunate, too, to have this rich old tradition that you're sustaining and that's sustaining you in the middle of Manhattan. So it seems to me that you represent the promise and beauty of America, which is having the old world in the middle of the new world and being able to draw on the great Sikh tradition going back through centuries while living in the excitement and modernity of New York City. I suppose my definition of a good trip is one that sends me back a different person from the one who left home. So I try to choose places as unlike the places I know as possible, and because I'm lucky enough to be in relatively comfortable and easy places between Japan and California, I often will seek out uneasy, uncomfortable places to kind of shake me up and ask me difficult questions and remind me of how little I know and how much I need to know.
Click here if you want to listen to the full episode on Wisdom and Practice. And, of course, please rate and follow our show if you’re up for it!