I found this article during my morning ritual of NY times perusing.
Of course, I believe that everyone travels for his or her reason (and those reasons are infinite), but I can’t help thinking that people could find much more satisfaction out of traveling, and maybe life in general, if they apply the maxim “Life is a journey, not a destination.” to traveling. Meaning, the place where we are going is less important then what we want to gain from the situation and how we hope it will change us. I truly believe that the things that we can learn from the process of getting there and what we hope to accomplish once there should be the goal of traveling in general. Don’t get me wrong, I love just sitting on a beautiful piece of beach, beer in hand with absolutely no worries in mind. However, I find the truly life-changing trips that I’ve taken, have all had a purpose (which might not have been apparent at the offset) where I have grown and learned something about myself, about the world.
I definitely agree that people are much more fulfilled travelers when they actually travel to fulfill goals, or as the article puts it “First, goals for travel should be both generally related to abstract life goals — like becoming a better person, not accumulating stamps in a passport.