If you know
me, you know that I want to see the world. You know that I devote quite
a bit of my time, energy, and money to getting to experience new
places. I just wanted to share some thoughts & quotes about travel
in general today.
Idea #1:
I see travel as the one of the most important ways of
expanding human beings’ understanding of each other. Through travel we
discover humility, love, friendship, passion and ourselves.
-Kirsten Cargill
I don’t actually know who this person is, but I love what she has to say (the quote came in one of my Why Go
emails). I agree 100%. Understanding each other, and the world, is
vitally important to humanity. There are things we simply cannot learn
from books, things we must experience ourselves, in both a small,
personal sense, and in a big picture sense.
How can we ever expect to fix the big problems if we don’t
understand each other on a personal level? How can we expect to fix
international problems without an understanding of how these problems
came to be? This sort of understanding includes culture and religion
and history and politics–some things you can learn from books–and also
a personal understanding of how people think, which is something that
cannot fully be learned from a textbook.
In support of that, I have another quote from Why Go:
Travel is the key of the life time. I’ve never figured out anything without being there.
–Jeffrey Sachs
Yes! And thanks to these people for articulating my feelings so much
better than I am able to. As much as I love to read about different
parts of the world, to read about life, I know that it is really no
substitute for the understanding that comes with experience.
Idea #2:
Is travel selfish? I’ve been accused of hypocrisy because I want to
help people but I also want to travel. I don’t think that this is
hypocritical. Certainly, there is a selfish way to travel. Staying in
an all-inclusive resort in Jamaica, never leaving your poolside chair
and trashy magazines, is selfish. But it is also not what I think of as
genuine travel, because you could just as easily do it at home (except
the weather wouldn’t be as nice for most of us). It is vacation. Which,
I suppose, has its place, but it is not what I am talking about when I
say "travel."
Travel is about understanding the world. It’s about opening our eyes
to what is really going on. It’s about experiences that make us better
people, experiences that we’d never have at home. And with these
experiences, with this understanding, we should get some feeling of
social responsibility. We see things happening abroad that would never
happen at home, and we should all make it part of our goals to help
everyone have food, clean water, education, healthcare–the things that
many of us take for granted.
Of course, ignorant "help" can exacerbate a problem. To genuinely
help, a thorough understanding of the situation is necessary. And this
goes back to idea #1–this is not something you can learn from a
textbook or television documentary.
Idea #3:
Is meeting an individual traveler the peace process in itself?
–Susan Hack
Peace is something else which must come from understanding and
experience. Peace must also happen on an individual level as well as a
larger-scale political level.
Hate and prejudice come from ignorance. People hate whatever group
(illegal Mexican immigrants, Muslims, whatever) because they fail to
understand them as people. There is also ignorance of the
situation–not understanding, for example, that radical Islamists do not
represent the beliefs of the vast majority of Muslims–but I believe
that a lot of it comes from a lack of experience and understanding of
individuals.
When we connect on an individual level with people different from
ourselves, we are dispelling our prejudices, conscious or not, against
other people. It is much easier to hate an ambiguous ethnic or
religious group than it is to hate a person. Travel allows us to step
outside of our comfort zones and connect with so many different people
from different places, different faiths, and different
cultures–connections we would not make at home. Of course, the internet
makes more connections possible, but it still lacks the immediate
realism of a face-to-face connection.
The Final Idea:
There is no substitute for actual experiences. Travel is a
collection of experiences that lead to understanding that is impossible
from the comfort of home. Travel is a series of connections that allow
for even more unique understanding. Understanding is the key to solving
our problems, on a personal level and on a global level. Thus, travel
is a necessity.