outer and/or inner journey?

Which was the more life-changing and lasting journey this summer -- the outer or the inner?

My trip to China for 3 difficult weeks...with that glimpse of Mao in his anti-Feng-shui Memorial? the crowds of the forbidden in the Forbidden City? thoughts on the politics of the aesthetics of decor in the Great Hall of the People? my visit to Confucius' home? that day's ordeal to reach the top of desecrated sacred Mt Tai? ...

My soon -- in our jet-age -- enduring again, with an attempted smile, the thoughtless mental state in the Heart of Dixie? the nervous excitement on "hiking out" on one pontoon for those high wind moments on my Hobie Wave? the emergency beaching of the boat, in fear, as lightning struck too near? the great fried crab claws?...

Or the insights and comprehensions of our human story via reading through When China Rules the World, The Idea of the West, The Adventurer -- The Fate of Adventure in the Western World, Inventing Europe, et al?

the inner mask

It is the acting, the necessary outer smile, the inner "smile", ie the obligatory positive attitude in the voice, the control of the face as an outer mask, the genuine or fictitious interest in a topic, that makes being in the South a trying, inner ordeal of acting on a foreign stage that exhausts a "Steppenwolf".

Southern Gentleman vs Steppenwolf

Journal extract:
people do not think here. they are awake enough to do their how of living, and perhaps a few other aspects -- but that "God died" some century ago, they still have not heard. God is called in on Sundays, or sometimes to bless meals. or as an explanatory guidance behind exceptions in disasters. God may be their ultimate concern -- to adapt Tillich -- but they 'live and move and have their being' in a very penultimate, this-worldly state of mind and life. a "Steppenwolf" studies questions and seeks answers 'they have not dreamt of in their philosophy' -- or only known in their forgotten sleeps' dreams.
they live absorbed in the how of this world. not the why of this, or an other.
plus, thy are most all so encouched in society, as to make a strong individuality appear anti-social. each time I come here, it is like going into a world of those asleep in their waking lives. Nietzsche's madman proclaimed the void at the heart of life. i am too polite, or see no point, here.
Southern Gentleman vs Steppenwolf