This was published 4 years ago
Why you can't understand the world unless you've explored it
It's hard to care about a country like Iran unless you've actually been there and met its people.Credit: iStock
Who cares what's happening right now in the Strait of Hormuz? Who cares if tankers are being seized and threats are being made and the US is inching further towards war? Who cares if Iran's bluff is eventually called and the rockets start raining down?
It will just be another battle in another foreign land. Something else happening in the Middle East – and there's always something happening in the Middle East.
But, I care. I care deeply about the fate of Iran. I care because I've travelled around the country and met the people and shared the culture. I care because I have a connection.
This isn't some vain attempt at leftist virtue signalling (if that's really a thing). You probably care just as much about Iran if you've done the same thing. You're probably just as worried about the idea of war being forced on a beautiful land if you've spent some time exploring it.
This is how human nature works. You reserve your concern for the places and the people you have a personal connection with. You worry less about those you don't. Names and words and facts mean nothing when they just exist on a piece of paper. People, faces, experiences, tastes, textures, sights, feelings, memories – these mean everything. They mean you care.
And that goes for any place. Any event. Whether we're talking natural disasters or acts of terrorism, floods or famines, massacres or even miracles, events that are taking place in any and every corner of the globe: I'm convinced that the only way you'll really, deeply care about them is if you've been there.
That's certainly been my experience. As an example: right now I have a hard time mustering the same worry for, say, the Philippines, as I do for somewhere like Palestine.
By all accounts there's a horrendous and essentially secret war taking place in the Philippines, as President Rodrigo Duterte gives shoot-to-kill power to drug-raiding police forces. And yet news of that doesn't move me anywhere near as much as news of the continued struggle that Palestinians are locked in for fair treatment in their homeland.
There's one major difference between these two crises: I've never been to the Philippines. I don't know any Filipinos. But I have been to Nablus and Bethlehem and Ramallah, and I have met people there and shared meals with them and witnessed their hardship, and so I care. I want good things for them. I want to make a difference.
And this is what travel is all about. You can't understand the world unless you've seen it. You can't love the world unless you've experienced it.
Travel at its best should be a search for understanding, a quest for experience. The more you travel, the more capacity you should have to empathise. The more of the world you see, the more you should be able to love it.
All of those news stories suddenly begin to mean something if you have a connection with their subjects. Massacres in Papua New Guinea, Ebola in the DRC, war in Syria, unrest in Ukraine: these crises hit hard if you've been to the places and you know people who might be affected.
I mean, I care about Kazakhstan now – Kazakhstan! That's somewhat shocking even to me, given the good Kazakhs aren't all that concerned with my welfare.
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I found out recently that the nation's one and only president had just made a surprise retirement, and that the capital city I'd (mostly) enjoyed wandering around had suddenly been renamed in the president's honour. That story meant something to me. It meant that people I knew were going through strange and possibly scary times. It meant that a city I thought I understood suddenly had a new identity I probably wouldn't recognise.
You may, of course, not want to care about the world. Maybe you'd prefer not to concern yourself with a million bad news stories taking place across the globe. Maybe you'd rather focus on your immediate surrounds.
And that's fine. It's understandable. But if you want to care about the whole world, if you want to understand it, if you want to consider yourself a global citizen and truly feel something about places and people who are going through hardship – in other words, if you want to love this place – then you have to see it.
You have to see it and feel it and experience it. And then it matters.
Do you find you care more about places after you've visited? Have any destinations in particular left a mark on you? Have these places changed the way you see the world?
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