Translator: Cesar Guadarrama Reviewer: Sebastian Betti
On December 24th, last year,
I was in the North of Thailand
celebrating Christmas.
I came back to my lodging house
located up the hill
on the very North of Thailand.
Since it was 2 am, it was really dark.
And in order to get there, you needed to follow some sort of small trail,
by the side of a forest.
So, on my way to the lodging house,
I could hear from far away, there were people singing:
"lights up", "lights down..."
I thought:
"This cannot be possible."
(Laughter)
When I got to the lodging house, I found three other compatriots.
So, we all ended up celebrating Christmas together.
That was my gift that year.
But, I'm not here to talk about
Christmas on foreign countries,
or about Chileans wondering around.
I come to share with you,
what traveling has meant to me.
I'm going to start talking about what can be gained by traveling.
Traveling eliminates prejudgment and broaden your mind. That's a fact.
Is sort of a daily exercise.
In order for you to be in good shape, you must be flexible.
Try to understand other people.
If you don't do that, you're dead. There's no other way around.
So...
I have met people who has traveled and comes back saying:
"English people are this way or the other.
The French. Uff! Chinese...
Indians are this way, the other."
Reality is, that by doing that, you are sabotaging your trip.
You don't want to look-up and see with a different perspective.
To believe that the "sopaipilla" is the best food on the world
-it's really good too by the way-
to believe that it really is the best food in the world,
that the best wine is Chilean --
and that we are a model to be followed.
That is not OK.
I'll give you an example.
The first time that I went to Bolivia,
I did it in a very naive way,
but when I actually had seen the country,
my whole perspective changed about the country. I changed.
It was really amazing
how you can completely change
your way of thinking 180 degrees.
The same happened to me when I went to India for the first time,
I thought that by going to the Himalayas
I would find the "monopoly on spirituality."
And once I would come back I would be levitating
on a yoga cloud, or a saffron cloud.
I would come back enlightened.
No, big mistake.
When I came back, I hadn't been enlightened.
I hadn't faced the "monopoly of spirituality."
Sure, some spirituality but not the "monopoly."
When I arrived to Chile I had the full conviction
that spirituality is everywhere.
As long as you truly are thinking in the here and now.
Traveling expands your horizons
and opens up your mind.
To travel is, how should I say it,
is to realize that on the timeline of life
we are all different
and that although we don't have to believe all the same,
we'll always find common things.
We all value friendship,
we value the possibility to be generous,
we all value goodness.
Traveling is also an experience to learn and discover.
That's always the same.
The first time that I was in India,
I went to a sitar concert.
At the end of the concert, I approached the musicians
to find out more about the instrument.
They explained to me that the sitar has different components:
a head, an arm, 20 strings.
And I said, wow, this is so interesting!
The sitarist asked me if I would like to take lessons with him the next day.
And I said yes. I couldn't have told him otherwise.
The next day, I started taking classes. This went on for two weeks.
I thought it had been not enough
so I had to come back the year after.
So I could continue learning some more.
So, traveling will always become
some sort of a learning experience.
That's what traveling means.
this is valid also for me.
In order for us to travel, we need to overcome all the fears
that we are always being fed with from everywhere.
That's a fact.
The other day at one of my English classes at the UFRO
a student told me:
"Professor, I'd never travel by myself because I believe it's dangerous."
And I replied:
"I always travel by myself, and I've never felt in danger.
Why do you think is dangerous?"
And she said: "My father told me so."
It's somehow natural that they say that
and I wonder:
Why are we so afraid of doing so?
And the answer is pretty simple:
Turn your TV on and watch the news
and you'll have nightmares for over a week.
This is really sad.
For example: the first time I was in India,
I thought I would see dead bodies floating over the Ganges,
because that's what we've been told.
However, when I was there, nothing happened.
It was so religious and full of ceremony.
You cannot even get close to take pictures.
It is so strange that you get to see that on TV.
People don't stand on a bridge
and throw dead people to go down the river.
That doesn't happen.
To be able to travel
you need to practice detachment.
Which is linked to all the fears
that people are constantly telling us.
Detachment in my case
happened when I went to travel in 2013.
I knew I was going to travel for quite some time
I had to get rid of lots of things.
I had to sell and give away...
and the rest I couldn't do anything with,
I left it at my mom's house.
Some of that stuff is still there in boxes.
It wasn't easy.
It's actually pretty difficult,
because we have been raised on a culture
where our timeline
needs to be drawn
by all the things we are constantly acquiring:
You finish university,
then you buy a car, then an apartment...
And so on. So, it's hard by nature.
Now...
I'm not here to sell the idea
that detachment is the way to go.
It actually isn't.
It's not like "Get rid of everything and go travel!"
That would be very selfish and foolish for me to say.
The truth is: There's no recipe for this.
Each time you have to analyze the situation
and see what option you have to travel
if that's what you want to do.
To make detachment even harder
there's always the question:
How much can I pack on my suitcase?
How much does it fit in there?
As much as the scale allows you and you can place on your backpack.
You just have to live with it
for the whole duration of the trip.
You have to be strategic;
you won't be carrying books that you're not going to read.
You can't do that.
Neither clothes you're not going to wear
or that are out of fashion. Go figure,
(Laughter)
I'm here to share with you what traveling has meant to me.
I hope this talk can motivate some of you to start doing so.
Thank you.
(Applause)