My wife Nina and I enjoy travel. I particularly like how my perspective is shifted by seeing unfamiliar places.
In his book Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain wrote:
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.
I continue to be amazed at how similar the people we have met in our travels are. They may look and speak differently. But they are just folks.
Why does travel break down barriers between people? Three reasons come to mind:
The “Other” Becomes a Person
It is hard to hate a particular person whom you have gotten to know a little bit. It is easier to hate a people who you know nothing about.It means getting a bit out of your comfort zone. A bit of risk is involved. But how else is a meaningful life to be lived?
Unfamiliarity Creates Opportunities
While on a long trip, we sometimes go to a local laundromat. Doing so is less expensive than paying someone to do our laundry.The real benefit is having to interact with someone who knows how the machines work and whose language we don’t speak! It is wonderful to have strangers helping us do this most basic of tasks. Some hand gestures are used, plus kind but incomplete attempts at us attempting their language and them trying out some English.Every time we do this I end up feeling better about the future of the world.
Experience Is the Best Cure for Ignorance
Like Twain says, prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness are the products of ignorance. The best way to expand one’s view of the world and all the possibilities it holds is to experience it.
We live in interesting times. So many positive things have happened and continue to happen. At the same time, there is a lot of fear and pandering to that fear these days. A lot of what is being put out there as facts is simply not true.
Protect yourself from being taken advantage of by experiencing more of the world. With the welcome changes in our country, that might simply mean going to a store in a different neighborhood than where you live. You will make the world a better place by doing so.
Remember, we are all human and not to be regarded with irrational fear.