A Holy Day, After All, Is A

Often When We Think Of Exile We Think Of Destruction Or Loss. But The Dalai Lama Always Says Exile Is Reality, It's Something We Can Make Use Of, And He Has Used It To Get Rid Of Everything That He Thought Was Stifling And Old, And To Create A New, Improved And Much Healthier Tibet.

A Holy Day, After All, Is A Day For Considering Everything You Otherwise Think Too Little About.

What More Could One Ask Of A Companion? To Be Forever New And Yet Forever Steady, To Be Strange And Familiar All At Once, With Enough Change To Quicken My Mind, Enough Steadiness To Give Sanctuary To My Heart. The Books On My Shelf Never Asked To Come Together And They Would Not Trust Or Want To Listen To One Another. But Each Is A Piece Of A Stained-glass Whole, Without Which I Wouldn’t Make Sense To Myself Or To The World Outside.

And If Travel Is Like Love, It Is, In The End, Mostly Because It's A Heightened State Of Awareness, In Which We Are Mindful, Receptive, Undimmed By Familiarity And Ready To Be Transformed. That Is Why The Best Trips, Like The Best Love Affairs, Never Really End.

For If Every True Love Affair Can Feel Like A Journey To A Foreign Country, Where You Can’t Quite Speak The Language, And You Don’t Know Where You’re Going, And You’re Pulled Ever Deeper Into The Inviting Darkness, Every Trip To A Foreign Country Can Be A Love Affair, Where You’re Left Puzzling Over Who You Are And Whom You’ve Fallen In Love With.