"Letters to my son"

Kent Newburn

We need to travel. If we don't offer ourselves to the unknown, our senses dull, our world becomes small, and we lose our sense of wonder. Our eyes don't lift to our horizon; our ears don't hear the sound around us. Our experience is restricted, as we pass our days in a routine that is both comfortable and limiting. We wake up one day and find that we have lost our dreams in order to protect our days. Don't let yourself become one of these people. The fear of the unknown and the lure of the comfortable will conspire to keep you from taking the chances a traveller has to take. But if you take them you will never regret your choice.

Sure, there will be moments of doubt when you stand alone on an empty road, in icy rain. Or when you are ill with fever in a rented bed. But as the pains come, so will they fall away. In the end you will be so much stronger, so much clearer and a so much happier person, that all the risk and hardship will seem like nothing compared to the knowledge you have gained and the life you have lived.