Why do we travel? Well, we travel to gain experience in the world. And I think our concept of travel has radically changed over the years, certainly due to the Internet because we are exposed electronically, at the very least, to all the venues that we would like to visit, we would like to see. But, of course, it’s a lot like, in a sense, going to India. We hear a lot about India, but when we get there, it’s totally different.
So I think we travel for another reason, actually. I think that we travel to learn how to control our emotion. My story. Recently, our school system is ending for the year. It’s summertime.
Time to get away. So I decided that I was going to go to Krakow and then on to Vancouver, Canada. So to go to Krakow, because I’m always trying to cut the cost of my ticket, because now it has become extremely expensive as you know, I decided to go from Taiwan through to Bangkok through to Istanbul, and then eventually to Cracow. Reasonable. Little bit longer, but reasonable.
Now on Air Canada’s website, this is purchased through Air Canada supposedly, it states that you are allowed to pay for an extra bag, so I brought an extra bag. So you remember that piece. I’ll come back to it. So I left home. I taught school, left home a little bit late, and drifted off into my little world, which I have a tendency to do sometimes, writing in my notebook, and I missed the airport stop on the high speed rail system.
Missed it somehow. So I’m traveling with my friend, and she became extremely distressed to say the least relative to my incompetence virtually, so I had to go back. And this now takes about another hour, so our time is getting slightly shortened as you can imagine. So I arrive at the airlines, going to be Thai Air, part of the Star Alliance, so called, and they then proceed to look at my luggage not as an extra bag. No.
It’s not an extra bag. It’s just additional weight. So I am over 10 kilos, and they charge an outrageous amount of money, $55 per kilo for this overweight bag. So I end up paying over $500 for this extra piece of luggage, which I could easily have left at home, easily. But at the airport, there is nothing you can do, is there?
So this kind of warms my temperature up just a bit to say the least. So then we’re off, and we are of course, as you know, we are covered by people and experiences and security and passport control and then another passport control and another luggage control. You say to yourself, I’m sure, like, how could there possibly be any illegal activities whatsoever in the world? I mean, these people have to be very clever to get past all this security nonsense because for the average person, I think it’s just an irritant. It’s nothing to do with safety, it’s to do with bureaucracy, but private opinion.
So eventually I end up in Istanbul, and now there is some thought that just maybe I will have to pay an additional baggage charge. But I’ve decided that I’m going to be gracious in all of this. I am not going to get distressed. And inevitably, everything went fine. It was like God had smiled on me, if you will.
And so I arrived in Krakow Airport, passed through all the customs, all the luggage arrived, and everything was quite wonderful. But I had a moment to reflect, you know, that the greatest journey, the greatest travel has nothing nothing at all to do with external travel. It all has to do with internal travel, doesn’t it? I travel so I could learn, as I was saying earlier, about my emotions, about the suffering and the pain that I seem to possess as a frail human being. So I think from now on in my life, I’m going to aspire to truly not get angry about trivial things and truly take control of the reality that I occupy because I believe, I really do, that I’m here for a reason.
We all are. We’re here for a reason. Now it’s up to me to uncover it, and experiences such as travel that bring me patience is certainly a way that we can learn and we can grow. So patience. And you know what they say. You know what they say. Critical thinking is necessary, especially for patience, and critical thinking is great. God bless. You take care. Bye bye.