One hundred days ago I was about to board a ship for a voyage around the world. I was excited about the journey before me and anxious about leaving home. One day before the voyage ends I am excited about returning home and anxious about leaving the ship and the people that have given me so much.
When one travels they often miss the place they left behind. As I traveled around the world I at times felt a longing for and appreciation of the wonderful aspects of my life that slowly became more distant and insignificant. The simple joys of falling asleep in my own bed, playing with the dog, the company of close friends, playing guitar, or fulfilling a particular food craving are pleasures now relegated to memory. In short time I will adjust back to “The Real World” but with an understanding that it is really just “My World” that I am lucky enough to live in and that the real world is much more complex.
I have come to appreciate the magnificence of the America in which I live and all its blessings of opportunity and freedom. However I have also come to appreciate the uniqueness and beauty of other people around the world. On this voyage I came to a conclusion different from the idea that, “America is the greatest country on the earth.” This is a saying I grew up with and that has been repeated numerous times by my parents, teachers, and myself but a saying I now realize is not true. For greatness is only a term used to describe something from ones relative perspective and its meaning is not a matter of fact but opinion. To believe America is the best nation only serves to enforce ones false sense of superiority in this world.
While traveling I perhaps have grown to see the world from a perspective similar to that of astronauts. Except instead of seeing the world as a geographic whole I saw the similarities and commonalities of humanity. The common emotions of happiness, despair, hatred, admiration, pity, humor, jealousy, and love cross geographic and cultural boundaries. I learned that the miniscule differences of language, religion, and culture pale in comparison to our emotional similarities as human beings. For these nuances are only a result of historical events, geographic separation, and time. I hope that one day kids can put a map on their wall without political boundaries and only the word “Humanity” across its surface.
This voyage again reinforced my understanding that some of the most important factors in ones life are out of their control. The location, time period, and parents to whom I was born have played a more significant role in determining my ethics, personality, ideological beliefs, education, and wealth than any other factors I have control over. The fact that I am one of the few people on earth with the opportunity to travel the globe, instead of one of the many people I met struggling to survive, only serves to remind me how lucky I am. This voyage has instilled in me a sense of responsibility as a person of privilege to help those less fortunate than myself and I hope this feeling remains with me for the rest of my life.
I have met many wonderful people and seen some incredible places on this voyage. I saw a dead body floating in the Ganges, partying in the streets in Brazil, kids begging from me in India, shantytowns in South Africa, an orphanage in Mauritius, a man whose face was severely deformed begging on the streets of Saigon, mountains in Malaysia, a rural agricultural village in Vietnam, Skyscrapers in Hong Kong, the great wall of China, the Taj Mahal, Hiroshima, Pearl Harbor, and other incredible places. I realize that few people are fortunate enough to visit these places in a lifetime yet I am still only 22 years old. Why Me?
I came to an interesting conclusion when observing and reflecting upon the youth I met in these countries. I realized that people my age and younger in these countries shared common interests such as watching movies, listening to music, and having fun. Kids seemed to enjoy similar activities and especially each others company. I ask, why can’t we have this attitude as nations? I feel that adults to often discount the knowledge within a naive kids mind. Perhaps kids are just better able to simplify situations into what is truly important while adults get lost in the confusions and complexities of life. We must realize that people everywhere of all races, religions, and creeds are still people and ultimately with education and tolerance can get along.
I originally was going to write about many other topics in this entry such as the danger of worldwide consumerism, the necessity to eliminate nuclear weapons, global environmental degradation and sustainability, and the urgent need for many changes in America. However, due to the delay in writing this entry and the high probability that few people will read this I am going to finish with one more thought.
MONEY DOES NOT EQUAL HAPPINESS!!! We have all heard this before but for many of us money remains the driving factor motivating our lives. I too still struggle with a strong desire to make money but I have discovered something more elemental and more important than money in our lives. I now understand that happiness is not obtained from the vacations we take or in the things we buy but in the daily beauty we find in our experiences and interactions with one another and the world around us. Descartes said, “I think therefore I am.” The world and your happiness in it is how you perceive it to be, and that perception will create the reality around you. So be happy.
I am going to end with a speech from a 1996 commencement address given By Carl Sagan in reference to a picture taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft. The picture was of Earth 4 Billion miles away and showed our planet as a Pale Blue Dot in the vastness of the cosmos. For me it is a reminder of our insignificance in the universe and ultimately teaches me that the most important thing we have in this life is each other.
PALE BLUE DOT
We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
Earth ... Home Sweet Home
