Roots and Routes

A friend sent me an e-mail of advices for the new year from the Dalai Lama.
I've no idea if they're authentic or not...

At least once a year, go someplace new in the world.

This seems to be good counsel for expanding our horizons, though I remember very well the folk tale about the man who travelled a great distance seeking treasure, only to find it hidden in his home when he returned. Travel may broaden, but it also threatens. I had a relative who travelled to France for about one dangerous month many years ago, and he came home with odd "treasure": a noticeable French accent that, like some mysterious foreign "bug", never has quite left his system. Of course, he was young and malleable; his phonetics were easily affected.

My wife and I are planning a trip to Italy this spring, and I don't expect to bring much booty home: a few phrases of Italian and maybe a beret or something, but the important thing about the trip, to my way of thinking, is that I should come home again as a better-informed, returning tourist, and not as some expatriate Italian. Deep roots make good substitutes for long routes.