Come to the Door: Arches | Meknes

The duality of Islamic architecture—mosques and other buildings fronted by plain facades behind which are intricate, richly colored, textured, decorative, and superbly designed sacred and secret spaces—spurs me to consider the external and inner sides of life. I travel extensively and in those locations farthest from my home, either geographically or culturally, I find infinite opportunities for learning about global diversity.

In my mind, travel is the true university. It teaches us to expect the unexpected and reminds us of the many way’s we experience being alive. If you are truly someone who is living fully without sharp edges, embodying love more than constriction, you know that your way is not the only way. When we are willing to open ourselves to possibility, we recognize different lifestyles not as contradictions to our own, but as bright lights joining ours on the full spectrum of humanity.

In this mosque in Menkes, a northern city in Morroco, you can step inside, sit, observe and absorb the surroundings, and find sacredness. The physical or mental act of “coming to the door” is a metaphor for leaving behind performative, pretense-based ways of living and engaging in true, curious, and authentic whole-heartedness.

I often say that any good or beautiful thing I’ve learned about myself has come from being broken open by travel. It is in some ways an overstatement, as I’ve also learned from being a mom, a lover, a daughter, an artist, and more. But specifically from travel, I have experienced the wonder of knowing there are thousands of ways of being alive. Whether you are a doctor, a teacher, a financial advisor, a farmer, cook, artist, homemaker, fieldworker, or someone who makes widgets all day in a factory, travel disrupts all categories. In the place of division and difference, travel tosses out unbelievable, astonishing, unifying examples of possibility.