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Traveling to unfamiliar lands can be more than a simple vacation. When you don't understand the language, the need to rely on others for help can refine your practice of vulnerability. Becoming vulnerable requires concentration, devotion, and a leap of faith—the ability to abandon yourself to a forbiddingly foreign place and say, in effect, "Here I am; do with me what you will." It's the first step on the pilgrim's path.
The second step is absorbing a lesson that grows from the first: The more you humble yourself, the greater you become. The more you see of the world, the more you realize what a vast and awe-inspiring place it is. Travel teaches us how small we are, and when we truly understand this, the world expands infinitely. In that moment, we become part of the larger whole. Every journey takes us inward as well as outward. As we move through new places, encountering new people and food and artistic creations, new languages and customs and histories, a corresponding journey winds within as we discover new morals, meanings, and imaginings. The real journey is the ongoing and ever-changing interaction of our inner and outer lives.
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