The C.A.T. Principle – Global Ebook Awards GOLD & SILVER Winner for Best Self-Help Non-Fiction Ebook of 2014 & 2016

The Blue Door of Dublin’s St. Patrick Cathedral. Photo by Diksha Dua.

Travel: The Door to New Horizons…

And to think that it’s already been a week, since I sat down to a Sushi dinner on the bank of Dublin’s Liffey River after a day’s journey to discover Belfast’s leading-edge Titanic Museum. Words can’t do justice to the experiences that spring forth when travel is swapped for the otherwise daily routine of our lives. Make no mistake about it: travel is the door to new horizons.

It wasn’t without trepidation that I accepted the suggestion of a four-day visit to Ireland’s calm, but convivial capital. Routine aside, it’s never easy to break away from the known to seek out the unknown. But once embraced, there’s no going back and there’s no telling what might happen. It’s the potential surprise that lures the traveler to wherever the traveler is going. Around every corner, behind every door, and through every gate, there lurks a world awaiting discovery, a world to be experienced.

It’s the small things that add depth to the novel realities the traveler confronts: the cab driver with the working-class Dublin accent saying ‘dill’ instead of ‘dude’ while recommending a book on Irish revolutionary Michael Collins, by happenstance laying under his rear car window; the inability to find a cashier to break a 500 Euro bill, only to discover the sole cashier in Dublin to affect such a deed is the teller at The Central Bank of Ireland; noting the demarcation line from southern Ireland (the Republic) to Northern Ireland by the number of Union Jacks flying and the absence of Gaelic on Northern street signs. These are a few of the many small tales behind which larger ones skulk.

Dublin’s Liffey River. Photo by Al Bolter.

Travel is not without risk (see Risk: The Drug of Life…), but it’s the risk that brings travel to life. Within the unexpected hides the elixir of travel. If certainty is the mother of boredom, then uncertainty is the breeder of excitement. Traversing the wonders of the Belfast Titanic Museum makes one wonder how risky, and sometimes tragic, travel can be.

With more than 1,500 lives lost on a cold early morning on April 15^th, 1912, the sinking of the RMS Titanic in the North Atlantic is still one of those stories; no matter how often one hears it, never ceases to amaze. The ship’s builders said she was unsinkable, but little did they know that five days after her maiden voyage she’d come to rest at the bottom of the Atlantic. Meandering through Belfast’s museum, this epic tale of man’s achievement and hubris is on full display. The museum stands not only as a monument to the lost Titanic, but as a testament to the perils of travel.

Belfast Titanic Museum. Photo by Diksha Dua.

It’s a choice to travel. The era of the Titanic is long gone and we live in an age of jet travel, where hours, not days or weeks, measure the distance between continents. We’d be remiss not to take advantage of this miracle age of flight. The world is smaller than it’s ever been and the opportunity to move around it has never been greater.

Within the walls of Dublin’s St. Patrick Cathedral hangs a wooden door with a hole cut through it. More than 500 years ago two feuding families came to be separated by this door, and as a gesture of peace the head of one family offered his arm through the hole to the other family. He did this not knowing whether or not it would be accepted in peace or willfully cut off. Accepted in peace it was, and the phrase “to chance an arm” was born.

In the same vein we must “chance an arm” when we travel. We must extend the arm of friendship to people and cultures unknown. “Your feet will bring you to where your heart is” says an old Irish proverb. If true, then may our heart lay in the right place, and may we travel to horizons unknown…

For more check out the Global Ebook Awards GOLD & SILVER Winner of 2014 & 2016, The C.A.T. Principle: Change, Action, Trust – Words to Live By available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. See the latest Amazon reviews here.

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A 2014 Global Ebook Awards GOLD Winner for Best Self-Help Non-Fiction Ebook.

A 2016 Global Ebook Awards SILVER Winner for Best Self-Help Non-Fiction Ebook.