I feel like I don't have to be the one to break the news to anyone that we live in a time where the ends of the Earth are accessible to almost everyone. If you look back at the last one hundred years, with the development of the automobile, the airplane, and high speed trains, we have transformed travel completely. If you look back five hundred years, a trip that took more than three months then, can now be made in a matter of hours. The world has gotten smaller. We can cross oceans and entire continents in the time it took someone to ride their horse from one town to the next. And with this new scale of mobility, I feel like a desire to see and experience as much as possible within the short lifetime that we live should be fueled by our natural curiosity about the unknown.
Unfortunately, I am faced, daily, with people who have not left their own country, feel like they have no way to leave their country, and when it comes down to it, have no desire to ever venture out into a world where not everyone speaks english.
We need to broaden our horizons. Sure, countries like the United States are so vast, that they encompass a huge variety of landscapes and terrains. You could see a great deal in this country alone. But you can't witness original Japanese culture at the mall. You can't hear the Australian accent and witness the Great Barrier Reef on TV quite as effectively as you can in person. You can't see towns that are more than 1500 years old in New York or California or anywhere in between. The reality is that there is exponentially more to see outside of your own country and allowing yourself to be confined to the borders of that country is to deny the role we are all beginning to take on as citizens of the world. It is our responsibility to witness and, most importantly, respect alternate cultures in the world.
You are now free to move about the world.
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