In the previous seminars of the unit our discussion majorly revolved around some aspects and meanings of traveling. They had been highly effective – a lot of thanks to the leaders who proposed such inspiring questions and managed the seminars efficiently, and our intelligent classmates who gave brilliant answers🤓
I learned a lot through these seminars, especially in topics such as the definition of travel, why travel (yes, the unit title🙌), the importance of traveling, the most appealing aspect of traveling, and the many, many quotes of traveling, etc.
Is immigration a type of traveling? Does traveling include all actions involving moving from one place to another, or does it solely refer to voluntary adventures? In my view, traveling is defined differently by different people, and these different ideas which originated from different backgrounds, life experiences, and perspectives would be unfair to unite, as traveling is a fairly broad concept that welcomes extensive comprehending. When we discussed quotes regarding traveling, students thought differently of the quote “‘Why do you want to climb Everest?’ ‘Because it’s there.’” by George Mallory. A notably amount of students rebutted the quote by explaining how they couldn’t possibly climb all the things that are in front of them, and they wouldn’t want to if they could. Their passion and enthusiasm towards traveling (and especially adventuring) much less than the equivalent other half of students who highly agree this quote would occur similarly as how they might define traveling when it appears in an unexpected, unwilling, or vaguely defined way. And by that I mean people who do not enjoy these sorts of traveling tend to be unlikely to define immigration, travels between two short places, or prostration (a kind of religious behavior of traveling) as traveling because they might find them different from the “ordinary” travels on vacations in a way of being less pleasing; people who would love to climb “Everests” that are right there on the other hand, might find the general definition of traveling well suited for any traveling.
Is traveling important? As long as the question was asked, it was accompanied by another: how does traveling help people learn new cultures, identities, etc, and so it was universally assumed by the class that traveling was important. That quieted me and my refute to the question, which might be the only one. But now I would be able to expound it fully in my seminar reflection🤨. First, it is not fundamental for life that humans travel – even people who travel for living resources and refugees who travel for safety, their ultimate goal is to seek living resources and shelter, not to travel. Traveling is only an indirect way of achieving their goal, and traveling itself could not provide what they want (like, what if they did not get what they need in the new places they went to?); and by that, traveling is highly replaceable as long as they are able to gain living resources and shelter locally. Second, traveling could make people easily ignore significant things: things that are around them. Traveling would make people stuck in the mode of frequently venturing out for valuable things, instead of considering how to fully utilize the resources that are right beside them. Third, traveling is not the only effective way to learn; tiny, ordinary things that occur around us everyday should serve no less inspiring and thought-provoking as guidance than traveling, and they are far too underestimated as of being meaningful.
I had a nice discussion with Emily on a quote she likes “When you’re dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you’re dead? Nobody” from The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. Emily told me it was cool to think that you’re body could still persist on to travel even after you’re dead; and I adore the idea that although never being able to travel again as a living person, the freedom of one’s dead body still symbolizes an eternal unexpected and unplanned trip full of adventures and no destination.
Borrowing Tingkai’s summary of all the quotes we discussed: they all encourage people to travel, I felt that though we had thorough discussions – but the seminars to some extent, both held positive inclinations towards traveling – I still very look forward to embracing some new aspects and perspectives of traveling, such as negative ones.