We travel, initially, to lose ourselves, and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again—to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.
Interpretation
Travel helps us to explore ourselves and experience life with renewed enthusiasm.
In this quote, Ray Bradbury reflects on the transformative nature of travel. He suggests that our journeys allow us to explore different facets of ourselves, reclaim lost innocence, and reignite our passion for life. Traveling opens our hearts and minds, helping us to appreciate the present moment and engage deeply with the world around us, ultimately leading to personal growth and self-discovery.
In practice
During a motivational speech about the importance of travel for self-growth.
I've written about 2,000 short stories; I've only published 300 and I feel I'm still learning. Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he'll eventually make some kind of career for himself as a writer. Ray Bradbury, 1967 interview (Doing the Math - that means for every story he sold, he wrote six "un-publishable" ones. Keep typing!)
I never went to college, so I went to the library.
There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.
I think the sun is a flower, That blooms for just one hour.
The first thing a writer should be is - excited. He should be a thing of fevers and enthusiasms. Without such vigor, he might as well be out picking peaches or digging ditches; God knows it'd be better for his health.
You can't try to do things; you simply must do them.
I think that travel comes from some deep urge to see the world, like the urge that brings up a worm in an Irish bog to see the moon when it is full.
It's a very immersive and intense form of travel to walk around with an interpreter and stop random people on the street and ask them about their lives.
Each time I go to a place I have not seen before I hope it will be as different as possible from the places I already know. I assume it is natural for a traveler to seek diversity, and that it is the human element that makes him most aware of difference. If people and their manner of living were alike everywhere, there would not be much point in moving from one place to another.
By seeing London, I have seen as much of life as the world can show.
As a traveler, I've often found that the more a culture differs from my own, the more I am struck by its essential humanity.
In general, in my life, one of the coolest things that I've been able to do is to go to different places and meet different people and see how they view the world and to learn what their music is and what their language is, and the food they eat and everything. That idea of the beauty of the vastness of the world has just been my life.
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