'Peculiar travel' and clear vision

A week away from the routine sharpens our focus...literally.

As I’ve gotten older, my vision has been deteriorating a bit. Nothing drastic, but definitely noticeable. I never needed glasses as a younger guy. I started needing them, at least for driving, just a couple years ago. But after a week here in the Dominican Republic, I can get by just fine without them — at least in the daylight.

There’s no doubt I see things more clearly when I’m here. I don’t mean it metaphorically. Well, okay. I do mean that—but I also mean it quite literally. I’ve been here for a week, and this is at least the third trip in a row that I’ve noticed it. The first time, last year, it was just a hunch; it was something I figured was a trick of the mind.

But just a few days ago, I was driving from our campus up in the mountains to the closest grocery store in a midsize town called Jarabacoa. And it was only by the time I arrived that I noticed I hadn’t been wearing my glasses. Things were clear. I could read road signs a hundred feet away that I couldn’t at home.

This shouldn’t exactly be a revelation. It’s the screens, obviously. At home, in the midst of my regular routine, I’m focused for hours on screens. Between the multiple monitors I use for work and the phone I’m tethered to more than I’d like to be, there’s too much near-focus. And, of course, there’s the sunlight here. Lots of it.

Here on the island, my focus is mostly farther out, both figuratively and literally. In our work at Camino, my screen time is limited to just a few minutes a day. At home, it’s sometimes eight hours or more, all things taken together. And so much of that is inside with artificial lighting. Here, sunlight soaks everything.

This clarity of vision is just one gift of this place, among so many others. And as though to make the point clearer still, this literal clear vision is of course accompanied by the figurative. I figure things out here. I see through challenges that have been looming and nagging. I go home a better husband and father.

It is always such a joy to accompany others on the journeys we undertake at Camino, because I have the privilege to see this same clarity of body, mind, heart, and spirit manifest in them, too. To see them recognize it in themselves, and to find consolation and joy not only in it, but also in the recognition that it’s even possible.

I’ve learned to spot it. You can see it in their eyes. It’s usually on the second or third day without phones, away from routines, untethered and immersed in what we call ‘thick time’ at Camino. There’s a lightness on their shoulders. A slowing of their pace. They find stillness. They look up at the sky. They breathe. Deeply. And they smile.

One of our participants this past week said something astute early in the course of our conversations. He remarked that it was essential at the age of these guys (all from nineteen to twenty-four) to rediscover their inner child. To excavate what brought joy and still does. To rediscover a shade of innocence, even if it cannot be fully restored.

I think he was right, and I think that goes for all of us, no matter our age. Sharper, clearer vision might be an essential tool for that rediscovery, though, and that means we might need to be intentional about achieving it. Kurt Vonnegut remarked, “peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.”

I think ‘peculiar travel’ is one such way to be intentional about clarifying our vision. About setting the conditions for that rediscovery of what lies deepest in our hearts, often under the accumulated debris of our everyday experience. That’s why Adam and I built what we have here on this beautiful island. What a gift it is to walk these roads.