Travel and the Meditation of Beauty

Corfu, Greece

Perhaps the greatest gift of travel for me is beauty.

I find it everywhere, often before the day even begins. On most of our travels, I wake early and go for long morning walks. I do this partly because I love the quiet, and partly because this is the time when beauty feels most generous. I watch the sun rise over the sea -  appearing from behind mountains that seem to rise straight out of the water. I walk through towns and cities before the streets fill, when shopkeepers are just beginning to unlock doors and the day hasn’t yet asked anything of us.

There is a softness to the world at that hour. A kind of honesty. Beauty doesn’t have to compete with noise or movement. It simply exists.

Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

I also have a habit, wherever we go, of finding the highest point I can reach. A hill, a lookout, a path that climbs above the town. That’s where the view opens up and the land reveals itself more fully. It’s where beauty tends to gather. Standing above a place, seeing how everything fits together, gives me perspective. It reminds me how small I am, and how lucky.

Beauty isn’t a footnote in my travels. It’s the heartbeat of them.

I’m not a religious person in the traditional sense. I don’t follow doctrine or dogma. But I resonate deeply with Ziggy Marley when he sings, “Love is my religion.” And I feel the same way when the Dalai Lama says, “Kindness is my religion.” Somewhere beneath those ideas, I’ve come to realize something else that feels true for me.

Beauty is my meditation.

Beauty is what brings me into the present moment. It’s what quiets my mind without effort. When I’m walking along a coastline and the sun begins to lift itself over the horizon, casting light across the water and the mountains beyond, I don’t need instructions on how to be still. I don’t need a mantra. I don’t need to try. I am filled with awe - beauty does the work for me.

Chania, Crete, Greece

What more could we possibly want from Mother Earth? Her display of beauty is constant and astonishing. She puts on a show every single day. We don’t always notice it. We don’t always honor it. But it never stops. The oceans, the skies, the forests, the deserts, the light, the changing weather. It’s all an ongoing offering.

As I continue to travel, and encounter more and more beauty, I find that something has begun to shift inside me. At first, it was the obvious beauty that got my attention. The dramatic landscapes. The wide, open views. The kinds of places that make you stop for a moment and just look with wonder. And those moments still move me deeply. They always have. Beauty reaches me in a way very few things do, often beyond what words can touch.

But over time, I’ve noticed something surprising. The more beauty I experience, the less I need it to shout. I’ve become less dependent on grandeur for beauty to touch me. I’m beginning to notice it more easily in its quieter forms. In small details. In moments that don’t announce themselves as obviously special.

Kaş, Türkiye

Beauty, I’ve come to see, is almost the opposite of addiction. The more you encounter it, the less you need extreme doses to feel it. It trains your eyes. It softens your heart. It refines your attention.

This is the meditation of beauty. It teaches us how to see.

Over time, travel has taught me that beauty isn’t reserved for spectacular scenes. It doesn’t show up only in postcard moments or perfect views. I notice it just as often in worn streets, imperfect buildings, the way light hits a wall, or in small, ordinary moments I once would have hurried past.

Travel doesn’t just show us beautiful places. It teaches us how to recognize beauty wherever we find ourselves. Once that happens, the way we see begins to change, and it doesn’t end with scenery.

Chania, Crete, Greece

As we move through the world and meet people from different backgrounds and beliefs, it becomes clear to me that they carry the same kind of beauty I see in nature. Quiet. Varied. And deep.

When I stand before nature, I don’t judge it. I don’t criticize the shape of a mountain or the mood of the sea. I don’t wish the sky were something else. I simply witness it. I honor it. I’m moved by it.

So why do we judge one another? People are part of the natural world. And yet, with each other, judgment comes so easily. Fear. Comparison. Separation. These are learned responses. They are not natural to the soul. Deep down, we know better.

Cadiz, Spain

We know that each of us contains beauty. We know that every human life deserves the same reverence we instinctively give to a sunset or a coastline. Traveling makes this harder to ignore. When you move through the world slowly, when you listen, when you share space with people who live differently than you do, it becomes clear that the divisions we cling to are thin and artificial.

I want to be honest here. I am very much a work in progress. I understand this idea far better than I live it. I still judge. I still react. I still have moments of impatience and fear. I am nowhere near a finished product. But I do understand the direction. And I have moments, real moments, when I glimpse what’s possible.

Travel helps. It helps me soften. It helps me see people more as I see nature. Not as problems to be solved or differences to be feared, but as expressions of the same life force. The same mystery. The same beauty.

Assisi, Italy

This is the deeper meditation of beauty. To begin seeing people the way we see the natural world. Without judgment. With curiosity. With reverence.

Beauty is love.

Learning to see beauty in people, not just in landscapes, changes something inside us. Our defenses ease. We open in small but meaningful ways. The world starts to feel more alive and less threatening.

Prague, Czech Republic

I truly believe that if we could learn to see each other the way we see the magnificence of nature, we would change the world. Not through force or argument, but through understanding. Through presence. Through love.

At this point in my life, travel has become one of my greatest teachers in this practice. It is a kind of yoga. A daily invitation to see more clearly. To notice more deeply. To recognize the extraordinary hidden within the ordinary.

Beauty is always there. The art is learning to see it. And I have found no better teacher for that art than travel.

Lagos, Portugal