Project Vision 21

It has been said, and rightly so, that one of the best ways to know oneself is to travel. But traveling is not just a mere geographical change, it is not moving from one place to another, but it means being fully and consciously open to realizing that our daily reality is neither the whole reality nor the only reality.

I know many people who move from one place to another, but never “leave” themselves. They arrive at a place on the other side of the city, the country, or the world, and expect and demand everything to be exactly the same as the place where they usually live.

They are people who arrive at a certain place and the first thing they do is look for the addresses of the same chains of restaurants and cafeterias they already know, and they go to eat there, without ever visiting, or wanting to visit, the local restaurants.

They are people who demand to be spoken in their language, even if they are in a country where their language is neither the official language nor a predominant language. Even worse, they demand that the people of the other country (of the other culture) behave according to the expectations and wishes of the newcomer, without the slightest attempt to understand the culture of the place they are visiting.

They are people who live within their own small narcissistic bubble, the only one that (unfortunately) they have known throughout their lives and that is why they (unfortunately) confuse it with the limits of reality.

They travel, they go to places, but, no matter where they are, they do not see the others, and, if they do see them, they see them as something exotic, something interesting to photograph, something fun for posting on social networks. But it is never a transforming encounter with the other who, being both like and unlike me, forces me to question myself.

With these "bubbles of narcissism" there is no possible dialogue because there is no dialogue of them with themselves. They do not have an inner dialogue. No matter where they go, they never leave where they are.

On the contrary, every true journey, whether on the other side of the city or on the other side of the world, is a journey of discovery and, therefore, of self-discovery.

Basically, one discovers that what one believed was "normal" was only what one was accustomed to. And that the "truth" that one had accepted was, in the best of cases, a truth valid only in a certain cultural and historical context.

And the mention of history leads us to another important point: not all journeys of self-discovery are geographical trips. You can also travel to the past and the future to reconnect with your self. 

Do you want to know your true self? Get out of the bubble of narcissism in which you are locked up and right where you are you will have already traveled to another reality.