Travel With The Eyes Of A Child

Travel With the Eyes of a Child

One of the greatest gifts of travel is that it WAKES us up.

When I'm somewhere new, I notice everything. The light on an old stone wall. The smell of coffee drifting out of a tiny café. A church bell ringing in the distance. An elderly woman sweeping the steps outside her home. A flower growing up through a crack in the sidewalk.

Suddenly… ordinary things don't feel so ordinary.

I was reading recently about returning to wonder, about seeing life again through the eyes of a child. Kids haven't decided they've seen it all. They don't walk past the ocean thinking, oh yes, been there. They stop. They stare. They ask a million questions. They experience it.

And travel reminds me how much of that wonder we lose.

We get used to things. We know our streets, our routines, what the kitchen looks like in the morning and what the sunset looks like from our neighborhood. And after a while we stop really SEEING what's right in front of us.

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So here's what I've been thinking about on this trip…

You don't have to get on an airplane to travel.

You can wake up tomorrow and decide you're visiting your own life for the first time.

Walk outside and look at your street like you've never seen it. The trees. The houses. The people walking their dogs. The sky.

Go into your favorite coffee shop and pretend you just flew in from another country. What would you notice?

Look at your husband, your wife, your child, your friend, even your own face in the mirror, with fresh eyes. What have you stopped seeing?

We think travel changes us because the world around us changes. Maybe that's only part of it. Maybe travel changes us because we change the way we LOOK at the world.

And if that's true, we don't have to wait for Greece, Turkey or Paris. We can practice wonder right where we are.

The world doesn't need to become new. Our eyes do.

That might be the deepest kind of travel there is… letting go of the part of us that says "I already know this," and saying instead, "Let me look again."

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Your Love Assignment

Today, try traveling without going anywhere. Look around like you just arrived. You might be surprised by how beautiful your life already is.

The Real Love Diet isn't only about loving yourself. It's about falling back in love with being alive.

Namaste,
Susan

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Susan Foxley is a yoga teacher, life coach and hypnotherapist in Santa Monica. Her fifth book, The Real Love Diet: Love Yourself Into the Life You Want, is coming in 2027.