Why We Travel

By Pico Iyer

W e travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate1. accommodate: 容納，為……提供充足的空間。. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed2. disperse: 傳播，散發(fā)。. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again—to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.

The beauty of this whole process was best described, perhaps, before people even took to frequent flying, by George Santayana in his lapidary essay, “The Philosophy of Travel.”3. George Santayanae: 喬治·桑塔亞那，西班牙裔美國哲學(xué)家、散文家、小說家；lapidary:（措詞等）像碑文那樣優(yōu)雅、簡潔而精確的。We“need sometimes,” the Harvard philosopher wrote,“to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness,into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard, in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what.”

旅行首先是為了忘卻自我，然后是為了尋找自我。旅行是為了開闊心胸、開拓眼界，更多地了解這個世界，而不是僅僅依賴報紙告訴我們的信息。旅行是為了盡我們所能為世上的另外一些地方帶去（文化）財富——無論是有意為之還是無心插柳——物質(zhì)和精神文化財富在世界各地呈現(xiàn)出不同的形態(tài)。而最重要的是，旅行是為了再度變得年少無知——放慢時光，如癡如醉，再次體會愛的感覺。

早在出門遠游成為家常便飯以前，喬治·桑塔亞那在他那篇精美的散文《旅行的哲學(xué)》中，就已經(jīng)描述了這其中的美妙之處，這段描寫也許無出其右。這位哈佛哲學(xué)家寫道：“有時我們需要逃遁，到一些廣袤孤絕的環(huán)境，過一段漫無目的的光陰，度一個陶冶情操、隨緣隨性的假期，這樣才能更加敏感地品味生活，體會艱辛的滋味，為了片刻的逍遙而拼命工作?！?/p>

假期到來，總要告別單調(diào)的生活模式，踏上一段旅程。但是一來二去，有人發(fā)出了“旅行就是從自己活膩的地方到別人活膩的地方去”的感慨。乍一聽來，似乎有些道理，但細細想來，此語似乎僅看到了“游山玩水”的視覺享受。其實旅行的意義遠非如此。人在旅途，不僅是新鮮文化的接受者，也是本地文化的傳播者，一個全新的世界展現(xiàn)在你的面前，你也代表了一個打破常規(guī)的新世界。

I like that stress on work, since never more than on the road are we shown how proportional our blessings are to the difficulty that precedes them;and I like the stress on a holiday that’s “moral”since we fall into our ethical habits as easily as into our beds at night. Few of us ever forget the connection between “travel” and “travail,”and I know that I travel in large part in search of hardship—both my own, which I want to feel, and others’, which I need to see. Travel in that sense guides us toward a better balance of wisdom and compassion—of seeing the world clearly, and yet feeling it truly. For seeing without feeling can obviously be uncaring; while feeling without seeing can be blind.

Yet for me the first great joy of traveling is simply the luxury of leaving all my beliefs and certainties at home, and seeing everything I thought I knew in a different light, and from a crooked angle. In that regard, even a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet (in Bengal) or a scratchy revival showing of Wild Orchids (on the Champs-Elysees) can be both novelty and revelation: In Bengal, after all, people will pay a whole week’s wages to eat with Colonel Sanders,and in Paris, Mickey Rourke is regarded as the greatest actor since Jerry Lewis.4. Wild Orchids: 《野蘭花》，美國情色電影；Colonel Sanders: 桑德斯上校，肯德基（KFC）的創(chuàng)始人；Mikey Rourke: 米基·洛克，美國影星，曾主演《野蘭花》、《摔跤手》、《斗魚》等影片；Jerry Lewis:杰瑞·劉易斯，美國著名喜劇演員，第81屆奧斯卡“瓊·赫爾肖特人道主義獎”獲得者。

我喜歡這段話對工作的強調(diào)，因為只有走在路上，才能深切體會先苦后甜的過程中，先前的苦和之后的甜是成正比的；同時我也喜歡這段話對假日陶冶情操的強調(diào)，因為養(yǎng)成道德習(xí)慣和晚上倒床就寢一樣容易。我們很少會忘記“旅行”和“苦行”之間的聯(lián)系，我自己就很清楚，我出門遠行主要是為了尋覓艱苦——自己的艱苦愿能體會，他人的艱苦需要目睹。從這個意義上說，旅行可以指引我們更好地把握智慧和悲憫的平衡——更加清晰地認識世界，同時也能深切感受到世間況味。有見地?zé)o感受顯然太不近人情，而有感受無見地則是盲目無知。

然而對我來說，旅行的第一大樂事，莫過于暫時拋下成見和確信，用不同的眼光和別樣的視角打量我自認為已經(jīng)了解的事物。這樣一來，孟加拉的肯德基門店和香榭麗舍大街上粗糙的《野蘭花》懷舊展演都極為新奇，令人大開眼界：畢竟在孟加拉，人們會花上一星期的辛苦錢吃一頓肯德基；而在巴黎，米基·洛克被視為繼杰瑞·劉易斯之后最偉大的演員。

If a Mongolian restaurant seems exotic to us in Evanston, Ill., it only follows that a McDonald’s would seem equally exotic in Ulan Bator—or, at least, equally far from everything expected. Though it’s fashionable nowadays to draw a distinction between the “tourist” and the “traveler,” perhaps the real distinction lies between those who leave their assumptions at home, and those who don’t: Among those who don’t, a tourist is just someone who complains, “Nothing here is the way it is at home,”while a traveler is one who grumbles, “Everything here is the same as it is in Cairo—or Cuzco or Kathmandu.” It’s all very much the same.

But for the rest of us, the sovereign freedom of traveling comes from the fact that it whirls you around and turns you upside down, and stands everything you took for granted on its head. We travel, then, in part just to shake up our complacencies6. Tylenol: 泰諾（一種尤用于頭疼的止痛片）。by seeing all the moral and political urgencies, the life-and-death dilemmas, that we seldom have to face at home. And we travel to fill in the gaps left by tomorrow’s headlines: When you drive down the streets of Port-au-Prince, for example, where there is almost no paving and women relieve themselves next to mountains of trash, your notions of the Internet and a “one world order” grow usefully revised. Travel is the best way we have of rescuing the humanity of places, and saving them from abstraction and ideology.

And in the process, we also get saved from abstraction ourselves, and come to see how much we can bring to the places we visit, and how much we can become a kind of carrier pigeon—an anti-Federal Express, if you like—in transporting back and forth what every culture needs. I find that I always take Michael Jordan posters to Kyoto,and bring woven ikebana baskets back to California; I invariably travel to Cuba with a suitcase piled high with bottles of Tylenol6. Tylenol: 泰諾（一種尤用于頭疼的止痛片）。and bars of soap, and come back with one piled high with salsa tapes, and hopes, and letters to long-lost brothers.

如果我們覺得蒙古餐廳開在伊利諾伊州埃文斯頓頗有異域風(fēng)情，那么肯德基在烏蘭巴托也同樣有異域風(fēng)情——至少同樣出人意料。盡管時下流行區(qū)分“游客”和“旅者”，但也許真正應(yīng)該區(qū)分的是這樣兩種人，一種會拋下原有的習(xí)聞習(xí)見，而另一種不會這么做：在后面這些人當(dāng)中，游客會抱怨“這地方跟家里什么都不一樣”，旅者會不滿“這里跟開羅或者庫斯科、加德滿都這些地方其實都一樣”?？此平厝幌喾矗鋵嵍际峭?。

但對于我們當(dāng)中的另外一些人，旅行能帶來至高無上的自由，因為它使人目眩神迷，給人以天翻地覆之感，促使人們重新審視以往視為理所當(dāng)然的一切。這樣說來，旅行的目的，一部分是為了目睹家中很少遇到的各種關(guān)乎道德和政治的緊急情況，甚至生死攸關(guān)的兩難困境，從而撼動內(nèi)心的自滿情緒。同時，通過旅行我們也可以填補報紙頭條之間的大量空白：比如當(dāng)你驅(qū)車行駛在太子港的街頭，幾乎沒有人行道，婦女在堆積如山的垃圾上大小便，你一定會重新審視互聯(lián)網(wǎng)和“統(tǒng)一世界秩序”的概念，而這種思考十分有意義。旅行是一種絕佳的方式，可以挽救那些基于具體地域的人性觀，而不僅僅把人性抽象化、建立于虛無縹緲的意識形態(tài)之上。

在此過程中，我們也可以避免自身的抽象化，逐漸意識到我們能為所到之處帶來什么，意識到我們可以充當(dāng)類似信鴿的角色——或者反聯(lián)邦快遞也行——來回傳播每種文化需要的事物。我自己就總把邁克爾·喬丹的海報帶到京都，把手編插花籃子帶回加州；每次去古巴都戴上一大箱瓶裝泰勒諾和塊狀香皂，然后帶回一大箱莎莎舞錄像帶，同時也給失散已久的兄弟們帶回希望和書信。

But more signi ficantly,we carry values and beliefs and news to the places we go, and in many parts of the world,we become walking video screens and living newspapers, the only channels that can take people out of the censored limits of their homelands.In closed or impoverished places, like Havana, we are the eyes and ears of the people we meet, their only contact with the world outside and, very often, the closest, quite literally, they will ever come to Michael Jackson or Princess Kate.

By now all of us have heard (too often) the old Proust7. Proust: 馬塞爾·普魯斯特（1871—1922），20世紀法國最偉大的小說家之一，意識流文學(xué)的先驅(qū)與大師。line about how the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new places but in seeing with new eyes. Yet one of the subtler beauties of travel is that it enables you to bring new eyes to the people you encounter. Thus even as holidays help you appreciate your own home more—not least by seeing it through a distant admirer’s eyes—they help you bring newly appreciative—distant—eyes to the places you visit. You can teach them what they have to celebrate as much as you celebrate what they have to teach. This, I think, is how tourism, which so obviously destroys cultures, can also resuscitate or revive them,how it has created new “traditional” dances in Bali, and caused craftsmen in India to pay new attention to their works. If the first thing we can bring the Cubans is a real and balanced sense of what contemporary America is like, the second—and perhaps more important—thing we can bring them is a fresh and renewed sense of how special are the warmth and beauty of their country, for those who can compare it with other places around the globe.

但更重要的是，我們?yōu)樗街帋r值觀、信念和訊息，而且在世界很多地方，我們成了鮮活的熒屏和報紙，只有通過我們這些渠道，當(dāng)?shù)氐娜藗儾拍軖昝摴枢l(xiāng)的種種外界審查的限制。在哈瓦那這樣閉塞貧困的地方，我們對于遇到的人們來說如同耳目，是他們與外面世界溝通的唯一渠道，而且很可能是他們此生與邁克爾·杰克遜或者凱特王妃距離最近的時候。

到現(xiàn)在我們也許已經(jīng)太多次聽到普魯斯特那句耳熟能詳?shù)脑?，他說真正的發(fā)現(xiàn)之旅不在于看到新奇的地方，而是用全新的眼光看世界。但是旅行的一個更微妙的好處，是可以將全新的眼光帶給遇到的人。這樣，外出度假不僅可以讓你更能體會故鄉(xiāng)的美好——尤其是以一個遠觀者的視角欣賞故鄉(xiāng)的時候——同時也可以將全新的遠觀欣賞的視角帶給我們所到之處。你可以告訴他們有什么值得欣賞，也可以欣賞到他們傳達給你的賞心樂事。由此我認為，旅行雖然表面上摧殘文化，但其實也可以復(fù)興文化、給文化注入新的活力，使得巴厘島的“傳統(tǒng)”舞蹈舊貌換新顏，也使得印度工匠以全新的態(tài)度關(guān)注他們的作品。如果說我們帶給古巴人的首先是真實全面的當(dāng)代美國風(fēng)貌，那么另外還有——或許更為重要的——賴以重新審視祖國的新視角，讓他們意識到自己的祖國是何等地溫暖美麗、無可替代，尤其是對于那些有能力將祖國與其他地方相比較的人們而言。

Thus travel spins us round in two ways at once: It shows us the sights and values and issues that we might ordinarily ignore; but it also, and more deeply, shows us all the parts of ourselves that might otherwise grow rusty. For in traveling to a truly foreign place, we inevitably travel to moods and states of mind and hidden inward passages that we’d otherwise seldom have cause to visit.

On the most basic level, when I’m in Thailand, though a teetotaler who usually goes to bed at 9 p.m., I stay up till dawn in the local bars; and in Tibet, though not a real Buddhist, I spend days on end in temples, listening to the chants of sutras.I go to Iceland to visit the lunar spaces within me, and, in the uncanny quietude and emptiness of that vast and treeless world, to tap parts of myself generally obscured by chatter and routine.

We travel, then, in search of both self and anonymity— and,of course, in finding the one we apprehend the other. Abroad,we are wonderfully free of caste and job and standing; we are,as Hazlitt8. Hazlitt: 哈茲里特，英國散文家、評論家。puts it, just the “gentlemen in the parlour,” and people cannot put a name or tag to us. And precisely because we are clari fied in this way, and freed of inessential labels, we have the opportunity to come into contact with more essential parts of ourselves (which may begin to explain why we may feel most alive when far from home).

Abroad is the place where we stay up late, follow impulse and find ourselves as wide open as when we are in love. We live without a past or future, for a moment at least, and are ourselves up for grabs and open to interpretation. We even may become mysterious—to others, at first, and sometimes to ourselves—and, as no less a dignitary than Oliver Cromwell9. Oliver Cromwell: 奧利弗·克倫威爾，英國17世紀資產(chǎn)階級革命領(lǐng)袖、政治家、軍事家。once noted, “A man never goes so far as when he doesn’t know where he is going.”

這樣，旅行同時從兩個方面顛覆我們的思維：它向我們展示平日很可能視而不見的風(fēng)光、價值觀和問題；但同時而且是更深刻的是，它讓我們看到自己內(nèi)心的方方面面，不去發(fā)現(xiàn)就很有可能漸漸磨蝕的東西。旅行到真正的異國他鄉(xiāng)，實際上就是旅行到我們其他時候很少顧及的心境、思維方式和潛藏的內(nèi)心活動。

從最基本的層面看，我盡管平時嚴格戒酒、通常晚上九點睡，但到了泰國就在當(dāng)?shù)鼐瓢赏ㄏ鼕蕵?；盡管不是真正的佛教徒，但在西藏還是連續(xù)若干天待在各個寺廟聆聽誦經(jīng)。我去冰島感受月光般恬靜的心境，沉浸在廣袤無樹的世界里那種奇異的靜謐空靈之中，輕輕敲醒自己平日淹沒在喧囂和俗套里的那部分內(nèi)心世界。

這樣，旅行既是為了尋找自己，也是為了忘卻自己——當(dāng)然，通過尋找自己自然能理解自己的渺小，從而臻于忘我的境界。在異國他鄉(xiāng)，我們可以完全擺脫等級、職業(yè)和地位的束縛。正如哈茲里特所言，我們就像“座上客”，不必受到名分和標(biāo)簽的限定。正因為掙脫了束縛、擺脫了無意義的標(biāo)簽，我們才有機會接觸到自己內(nèi)心更為重要的層面（這或許可以初步解釋為什么我們在遠離家園時感到活力四射）。

身在異國他鄉(xiāng)，正宜深夜不寢、隨心所欲，像戀愛那樣忘情沉醉。哪怕只有短暫的一瞬，也可以暫時拋卻過去和未來，做真實的自己，容許隨意解讀。我們甚至可能披上一層神秘面紗——首先在他人眼中如此，然后有時我們自己也能感受到——正如奧利弗·克倫威爾這位高人曾經(jīng)說過的那樣，“人只有不知道去向何方，才能走得最遠”。