Learning about this world gives us freedom over those who would use fears to cynically and selfishly influence and control us
By Nazarul Islam
Travel has fascinated human beings for thousands of years. Many centuries ago, the first human beings began their journeys from Africa’s ‘horn’ in every direction and multiplied in their numbers. Moving forward in time, wheels were invented which facilitated journeys. Travel enriched people and laid down the foundations of trade.
This comforts us with the belief that not all people who wander are lost. Early sailors like Magellan, Cook, Nelson and Drake embarked on unknown sea journeys from Europe reaching the far corners of our world. Eight centuries ago, Ibn Batuta had logged a journey of 25,000 miles. By the end of the fifteenth century Christopher Columbus had discovered America.
Later, as sailing improvised, men of Arts and scholars traveled. Christian missionaries moved in to Asia, Africa and the remote pacific islands to spread the gospel of God.
I like to share some of the most amusing, historical quotes of travelers who had shared wisdom through their quotations:
“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page”.
“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”
Lap Tazi
“Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.”
“Wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow”.
“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.
Mark Twain
A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving
It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
Marcel
I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.
Robert Louis Stevenson.
Sometimes our beautiful world seems like a scary place. The news that we are drip-fed through our devices often paints a biased and disproportionally terrifying picture. Technologically, we are more connected, but in many ways more isolated than ever.
Too often we seek out information that reinforces our prejudices and fears, instead of using interconnectedness to seek out that broadens our knowledge and understanding. Politicians have understood this trait well and weaponized it to manipulate and control our actions, in ways that favor them.
Once ideas, even false ones, have taken hold, it is much more difficult to take in information that challenges those ideas. Challenging beliefs and preconceptions can be uncomfortable. For me, one of the best ways to overcome false information about the world is to travel.
Travel is the antidote to our fears. There is a tendency to feel out of control and more fearful when we are unfamiliar with or we don’t understand something. When I hear people who don’t travel expressing fears about faraway places I like to ask them how they formed their opinion. Usually it is from outdated news stories, friend of a friend anecdotes, or politically motivated tales concocted to promote agendas.
It is rare to meet a fearful traveler and it is even more to meet a traveler that grows more fearful as they try and gain experience. There is something telling in that. Sure, there are places in the world that are inadvisable to visit, for example, disaster and conflict zones, but they are extremely small.
Demonizing strangers is easy. It is harder to demonize friends. Traveling, getting to know the world and connecting with people helps reduce the risk that areas of conflict will spread.
Through traveling, you learn quickly that it is foolish to put people into categories and that the cartoonish impressions that others ascribe to other nationalities are invariably inaccurate. In fact, when you see someone thoughtlessly demonizing any group they do not know well, it says much more about the accuser than the accused.
Through traveling, we learn that people of all cultures share basically the same hopes and aspirations that we have. Yes, outside appearances are often vastly different. We pray to different Gods or no Gods at all. We dress in different manners and have different traditions and languages.
Some cultures are outgoing and others are more reserved and stoic; but all cultures love their children, are proud of their heritage, want to improve conditions for their families and leave a legacy of some sort behind.
Through traveling our preconceptions are challenged and you will see other, perhaps better, ways of accomplishing positive things.
By its very definition, “news” is something that is unusual or doesn’t happen very often. That is why, behind our borders, the bad stories are the ones we hear and the good ones go unreported. It is because the world seems focused on negative things that we not only need to go see for ourselves, we need to be informal ambassadors for what is good in us and our country.
Instead of building walls and barriers to understanding, we should be searching for common ground, celebrating our differences and encouraging humankind to be more tolerant of each other. I am not so naive as to believe everyone is good, but no matter your political persuasion, those that benefit from spreading hate and division are often thwarted when we take the time to meet the world. I have traveled to nearly 40 countries in all the continents. Having traveled so much did not make me a person better, but neither did this make me less informed or carry irrational fear.
Learning about this world gives us freedom over those who would use fears to cynically and selfishly influence and control us. Becoming a better person requires being open to knowledge and willingness to change.
If you go to faraway places and get outside of the comfortable bubbles that we build around ourselves, you will become more informed. That is good for you and the planet.
Freedom is something we talk about, but don’t often exercise. Mindlessly waving flags and reciting pledges is not freedom.
Acquiring the knowledge to critically examine and analyze your circumstances and taking action to act upon that knowledge is freedom.
Mark Twain said it best: ‘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.’
Now in my twilight years, I realize more than ever do that I will never be content with a sedentary life, that I will always be haunted by thoughts of a sun-drenched elsewhere.
Read: Why we need a sense of humor!
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The Bengal-born writer Nazarul Islam is a senior educationist based in USA. He writes for Sindh Courier and the newspapers of Bangladesh, India and America. He is author of a recently published book ‘Chasing Hope’ – a compilation of his articles.
