By Peter Solis Nery
VIENNA — When everyday life wears me out with repetitive problems, I make an effort to change the scene. I try to go somewhere—maybe climb a mountain, visit another island or spend a day on the beach.
It’s important for me to go out somewhere that could give me a different perspective. And because I pray and seriously reflect on my life when I travel, I consider it a very good spiritual exercise. This year, I decided to spend four months in Europe living and traveling with the bare minimum, even with a very ascetic budget—which means no fancy hotels, no expensive dinners, plenty of walking, some intermittent fasting and a few good sacrifices.
I traveled mostly by bus and subsisted mainly on eggs, coffee, fruits and bread. When overseas Filipinos fed me or took me to fancy meals, I didn’t refuse. I let people practice their generosity. In return, I repay them with good company, some comforting stories and a strong message of hope.
Talking to Filipinos abroad is a good missionary exercise but I also value my time alone visiting churches. I like my silent prayers in stunningly beautiful and elaborate European churches. In the fourteen countries I have visited as of this writing, I have been to more than 75 churches already. Some of these old churches have become touristic attractions that they require admission tickets, but many still honor visits for short personal prayers.
Traveling on a budget is also a good spiritual exercise because the “pilgrim’s poverty” brings me closer to a superior force that is beyond my own strength as a survivor. It also affords me the sensitivity and vulnerability to see the human condition outside of just my comfortable own.
In the long bus rides, in the kilometers walk around the city, in my solo moments in churches, in the long airport transfers, I find time to ask myself existential questions—questions that do not necessarily come up when I am home in my comfortable zone.
I always argue that travel widens our perspective, expands our horizon, educates our consciousness. But I also mean that when we travel to find ourselves, our financial losses are simply eclipsed by our enriched experience, newfound confidence, and renewed faith in love, life and humanity.
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(Peter Solis Nery is a multi-awarded Filipino poet, fictionist, filmmaker and playwright who divides his time living in the Philippines and traveling around the world. He is a Palanca Awards Hall of Famer, and the first Filipino author invited to the Sharjah International Book Fair in the United Arab Emirates.)
