A million-dollar question? Travel Ambitions

Background.

I was talking with one of my relatives the other day. And He was in his latter part of life, in retirement. Having saved some money, living a comfortable life, now he is keen on travel. He wanted to visit America, for the second time. To see everything that he had not seen. And we were comparing two perspectives to life. As for myself, being middle aged, I am more focused on not travel, but in saving, as well as understanding what is going in our lives and the purpose of everything.

That there was the heart of our problems. You may not understand it but I will elaborate more. As that is truly a million dollar question. Which I think nobody have ever answered with a reliable accuracy, and would change a lives of all eight billion lives of humans on earth if they know the answer. So what is the question?

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A million Dollar question.

Compare two kids were born on the same day at same time, but two different places on earth. Obviously, they has to be two places, as if it is one place, there will be no two humans but one.

One, in a well to do, the wealthiest nation on the planet, America, the nation of dreamers. The other one in an average family in India. The American inherited a fortune from his parents and had a good education, became the CEO of his family company and he is at his pinnacle of his career. The Indian, worked hard for a scholarship, Got his degree from university and started his own business, built an emperor himself. Hard work but, now he is as wealthy as the American. Obviously now they are at the same age. Now, let's discuss what are the ambitions of these two people. As we cannot look at every aspect of life, we will look at their travel ambitions.

American, wants to travel all around the world. He has been to several countries on business and on vacation. But his ambition on his retirement is to travel every nook and corner of the world where he has not been, and he has a plan laid out by his personal assistant just for this purpose.

Indian, wants to travel all around the world, and he is keener to travel to America. Likewise, he has been there on few occasions, and he thinks that he had not seen it all. There seems to be plenty of places which he did not visit. So, that is his ambition. But the American would not even dream of spending most of his retirement in America. It is his country where he has all been. He knows all the news from past few decades. Nothing is there to see.

Let's stop there, to find out the million-dollar question. I think I have done a fair job comparing two minds of different people from two different countries. As you can see their status are similar. But their travel ambitions are different. If we look at all the reasons which shaped their travel ambitions, we can point out to some. As an example, the American, one major reason is he is in America, so he wants to travel to the rest of the world. Amount of money he has saved, will decide whether he can travel in a jet, or have to take commercial airliner. And many more. Even magazines he read when he was a child, previous places he had been, advertisements, his personal assistants likes and dislikes. All these have played their part in his future travel plans. Similarly, we can put forward some reasons for Indian's travel plans.

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But what is the common to all of these reasons. It's about their timing. All the reasons which made their current state of affairs in travel ambitions, happened after they were born! that there is the million-dollar question.

Their birth has determined the trajectory of their lives. Not in slight, but in great margins this had a bearing on their lives. The question now is "What are the factors which determine their birth?"

Million-dollar question - What factors determine circumstances of our birth?

This question applies to everything. As every thought which comes to our minds are shaped by our experiences which occurred after our birth. It is important to recognize what determines our place of birth. No matter how much our modern science is advanced, we currently do not have the experimental methods to determine this.

This is where philosophy and religion matters. Both of these disciplines try to answer these million-dollar questions with imagination. Which is far from truth.

I think this is the hardest question to answer from all the difficult philosophical questions. Even mindfulness cannot answer such questions. But more and more we are mindful in everyday we would be more and more aware such simple unanswered questions exists even in a world where everything is automated. We have never taken a leap from nature, not for a second, we are detached from it. What we think is artificial, is truly born from the natural. Hence, no matter how many stars are replaced by satellites in the night sky, a million-dollar question would remain. And on the day such questions are answered humanity will reach to its true potential pinnacle. Maybe we already knew the answers, but they are hidden among the lies of our own stupidity and greed.