It's pretty well known (at least in most places that aren't the United States) that travel is one of the most effective methods of reducing the bigotry and narrow-mindedness that comes from having little experience with anything beyond your immediate surroundings.
The internet is not a substitute. Especially now that a.i. slop is flooding media and casting doubt onto the veracity of any image you see. A video can't make you feel what it's like to actually be there. I have memories that are so distinct that they are actually tactile.
Of standing near the harbor in Hamburg, West Germany in a cold December rain by myself because the woman I took a train there to meet had a new boyfriend. Of being in Brussels at midnight, completely lost and unable to find my friends who had left me behind at a club. Of walking the streets of Paris at night, alone and completely fine with that. Of strolling through the Christmas market in Mainz, West Germany and realizing that home was 6,000 mimes away and that that was okay.
I've been to 49 of the 50 US states. Five Canadian provinces (Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and British Colombia). That all being said, if you can't actually travel to distant places, there's a good chance that, if you're in the U.S , you can actually encounter, talk to, and learn from people who have come from other places. You have to actually reach out though. Don't see everything from your own perspective.
As a long haul truck driver here in the US I have met drivers, warehouse workers, clerks and others from the following countries-
The reason I know where all these various people come from is because I chose to talk to, and engage with, the people around me. Every single life is a unique story. With billions of humans here on this planet I always wonder just how those around me happened to arrive in that same space and time where I was. I want to hear what their experience is.
I admire the courage that it takes to leave behind everything that is familiar and take that risk of changing your entire life. The hope and the determination. When I talk to these people I hear stories that connect us. I hear the human experience playing out in a beautifully chaotic connectivity.
We are all on this one world sharing, in all its variations, what it means to be human. Hope and fear and joy and love and if you yourself have any humanity you will see the commonality. The differences as well, but you will learn not to fear those. You will see that we are, fundamentally, so very similar that the artificial divisions created to keep us separated don't really hold up to scrutiny.
We don't get to choose who we are, but we do have the choice of who it is that we become.
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