Encounter with God

Eddi, my wife, and I are reading out loud The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho. It's about a Spanish sheppard boy going out into the world searching for his Personal Legend and a connection with the Soul of The World.

Page 127:
"Listen to your heart. It knows all things because it came from the Soul of the World and it will one day return there."

Page 130:
"My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer," the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky.
"Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity."
"Every second of the search is an encounter with God," the boy told his heart.

My being responds to this need for the quest, the search. Why do I need to visit China or the most remote tribes in Africa? Does anyone else have that need?