So again, your city is not the greatest city in the world, and your country is not the greatest country in the world. And of course as I write this, I don't know what city you are reading from, and I don't know what country you are born in, live in, or love as much as one should. I love the city I was born in, Brooklyn, NY. I love the city I live in, Scottsdale, AZ. and I love the United States. But after having traveled to 6 of the 7 continents, 44 countries, and literally thousands of cities there is no way I can truthfully say that my city is the best or my country is the best, nor can I say that about any city or country. It's small world but it's also too big of a world to believe that we are any better than anyone 10 miles away or 6,000 kilometers away. Now of course we understand that some people can't travel, some people can't move. And that's okay too. This article is still for you.
January of 2018 after a wild night on Pub St in Siem Reap I was sitting at this pizzeria in Cambodia thinking about this. Well not about this article, I was actually thinking about the pizza. I am from New York, no one can say New York doesn't have good slices, but I have also eaten at Gino Sorbillo's in Napoli, perhaps the most well known pizzeria from where pizza was invented. So I am sitting here in Siem Reap, a land far from New York and far from Italy, how was the pizza you ask? It was incredible. Was it as good as Gino Sorbillo's? Honestly no, but if Gino's is a 10, it was a 9. And it only cost me about $3.00 for a whole pie, and many people will never believe me how delicious this $3 plate was.
"We are the best" to me is a closed way of thinking that we all have had at some point in life. And closed ways of thinking are a formula for a closed world. Some of my most crazy party nights have been in the middle east. Some of the most amazing, intelligent, and interesting people I met have been in some of the most dangerous and most poor 3rd world places I have been to. Some of the most beautiful places I have ever seen are a 3 to 4 hour drive from my city and a large number of people in my town don't know that they even exist. A simple google search can show every country has countless inventors, artists, and great people that shape both their country and the world around them. Living one place and not traveling closes the mind, creates a false wall of imagination of a positive or negative stereotype of not only the land, but the people.
The people... Traveling all over the world, in particular to places where "people hate Americans" or we literally went to war with or currently have political tensions you find one outstanding attribute of general people... and that is that we are all the same. We speak different languages, we have different cultures, different foods, different religions, and the vast majority don't hate you. But get past that and we are all the same. You quickly realize that we have a lot more in common than we have not in common with people. When you begin to celebrate difference and embrace that which you love, respectfully ignore that which you don't love, share that which you have in common, you become a more worldly person, a more understanding person, and a better person in general.
Where you come from should play a role in you are, but it should be no means be the only part of you. As we all become more united through social media, internet, blogger, etc. We come to this realization that we are different, but we are all in this together now. 7 billion stories. Why only stick to the ones in your city or your country?
“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, The Innocents Abroad
Choose the continent!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment