Travel is overrated

On Facebook the other day, I engaged a friend in a short debate about travel. He thinks it is necessary for becoming a better person. I do not.

Travel certainly could make you a better person, but not because it must. As is so often the case in our human world, so much of self-improvement (perhaps all of it) depends on how willing you are to improve yourself. Travel does not guarantee that attitude.

When praising travel, does it ever occur to the travelers that they are almost always seeing people who are putting their best foot forward because they want something from you? They want your approval for whatever reason, and that reason is generally to get your money. What is there to learn from that which must make you better? Indeed, I think it more likely to make you worse precisely because you're being catered to. Your ego is being stroked.

I think that dealing with home and family and immediate surroundings offers the best chance of improving yourself because you are seeing people as they are and not as they want you to see them. Even this, as I've allowed, cannot make you better without your willing to become better. But it is surely more of a challenge to your person because there is not ready escape. You can walk away from a tourist trap. Leaving your cranky mother behind is not so simple.

Nor should it be. Daily life is where you learn to live well and properly, where you learn to adapt, if you desire to be a better man, woman, or child. If all you desire is seeing new things, well, I suggest that's self indulgence and not self improvement.