«» Travel Notes 009: Contemplations on Meaning
Why I travel and how I plan to visit all 82 provinces of the Philippines
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Earlier today, two friends shared a post about a girl who just finished visiting all 82 provinces1.
I’ll be honest... my first reaction to her post was a shot of jealousy. Why isn’t this me? I thought to myself. Why isn’t it me with 12K likes and 19K shares? Why isn’t it me with the 82 provinces? Instead, I sit here at home, tired and lost, with a depleted budget and 7 months to visit 33 provinces.
When I considered my first draft for this post, I wanted to answer the question, How do you travel so much? I wanted to share my strategies and tips for what I felt was success (visiting 22 provinces in 12 months), but I struggled. I realized I didn’t have the answers because I held not only the wrong question but also the wrong idea of success. It’s not how I travel but why I travel that I was urged to contemplate and share. Why am I trying so hard to visit all the provinces of the Philippines before I leave for Australia?
Here is my rehearsed answer: I feel uncomfortable living in another country until I’ve experienced my own. I want to visit all 81 82 provinces to deepen my appreciation for my home country.
Yet, it’s not... right. It’s not complete. I’m forced to ask myself, Is visiting all 82 provinces the only way to appreciate my country fully? I’ve visited 49 provinces already; does that mean I only have half appreciation for my country?
I can’t help but return to what I wrote in my very first article published on Medium ( The Timeless Nature of Travel):
I believe what attracts us to travel is not the destination itself but the frame of mind it awards. Being in a foreign land forces us to be explorers, beginners, learners, and children again.
Traveling makes the world suddenly seem so beautiful. Yet, nothing truly changes except the eyes with which it is viewed. Ultimately, the land is only ‘foreign’ or ‘local’ to the person beholding it.
Hence, I learned that being a traveler is less about where we’re going or what we’re doing and more about how we see the world… Travel is choosing to be curious about what we feel. Travel is choosing to risk a mistake so an adventure can unfold. Travel is living our dreams where we stand now–fully, completely, and shamelessly.
And how I have strayed.
I can tell you what it is like to be with a wild Philippine Eagle is like, I can tell you what it is like to be on the beach during a typhoon, I can tell you what it is like to be on the highest peak of the Philippines, and I can tell you what it is like to break a sardine run.
But a part of me feels I’ve lost some of that awe and wonder I set out with. Planning trips have become routine. My provinces have become a checklist, beaches have become monotonous, and mountains have become a race.
In doing all this in such a short period, have I rushed my journey to be over and dead before I have finished?
Am I on this journey only to end it?
Am I doing this, so people start to notice me? It’s not very efficient: I started January with 600 Instagram followers and 1900 Facebook friends. Today, I have 900 Instagram followers, 1900 Facebook friends, 69 followers on Medium, and 94 Substack subscribers.
Am I doing this for money? Let’s look at my finances since starting then: I’ve made 685,400.82, and I’ve spent 614,000.93 to allow a profit of 71,399.89 in 12 months. Hmm.
Stellar!
Yet, I know I’m not in the same place. I know I’ve changed, and I’ve grown. It’s not captured in my count of provinces, followers, or pesos.
So what is it? Why do I travel?
Still, I struggle to put it in my own words so I shall quote James Hollis, who in turn puts it in the words of Peter Matthiessen (as if to highlight just how difficult it is to verbalize all this contemplation of meaning):
“A number of years ago I read a book by Peter Matthiessen called The Snow Leopard. It is a... first-person account of his hitting a very rough patch in his life, his sense of inner desperation, and his soul’s summons to risk a “silly” passion to at least know that he was still alive. He decides that he will journey to the Himalaya Mountains of Tibet in search of a snow leopard, that rare, rich, beautiful beast... He went, as Sir Edmund Hillary said of climbing Everest, “because it was there.” A wonderful, foolish, and risky passion. After a long and perilous journey requiring great discipline, suffering, and hardship, hearing reports of sightings here and there, tracking the elusive creature, missing him by hours, he finally returns. When asked by others, “Did you see the snow leopard?” he replies, “No—isn’t that wonderful?”
Only a person who has truly been on the road can say of such a “failure,” “No, isn’t that wonderful?” By then, he had learned that the task is not to find the object but to live the journey, with passion, and risk, and commitment, and danger.”
I travel not in search of an object I can hold with pride but in search of a journey that can fill me with awe and wonder.
So, will I make it to 33 provinces in 7 months? I don’t know—isn’t that wonderful?
Until next week,
Atom
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P.P.S. Special thanks to Chewi, AJ, and Joanne for the feedback.
Maguindanao was split into two last September 2022, so from 81, we now have 82 provinces in the Philippines. I just learned about this too.