PUBLISHED: August 23, 2024 | www.baltimoresun.com
Sir Francis Bacon advised, “Reading maketh a whole man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.” He forgot that travel makes a complete and wise man.
I travel at every opportunity. I cherish the beauty of the open skies, the mellifluous chirping of birds, the charm and fragrance of blossoming flowers, and the giant redwoods that preside over forests like the god Zeus.
Nature is truly awesome and wonderful. Proof that the world is God’s creation, that the Book of Genesis is fact.
“’Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.’ So, God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good … And God said, ‘Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.’ And it was so.”
All the artistic geniuses together, including Michelangelo, Leonardo and Titian, are nothing compared with God’s transfixing handiwork.
The lyrics of “America the Beautiful” speak volumes:
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
Travel makes you humble. It reminds you of your insignificance and powerlessness when confronted with the elements. One look at the Rock of Gibraltar underscores your smallness, one look at Niagara Falls emphasizes your weakness, one look at the Grand Canyon evokes your awe.
Travel is necessary for recharging your batteries and reflecting on the purpose of life without the constant distractions of politics, the news cycle, traffic congestion, email or text messages. Sage and renowned U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis famously volunteered, “I can do 12 months’ work in 11 months, but not 12.”
Travel is a wonderful antidote to narcissism. It is dispelled the minute you are terrified by an elephant charging at you in an African jungle. You are immediately convinced that man is not the superior species.
Travel gives you a proper sense of perspective, seeing things in their proper proportions. Lord Chesterfield thus wrote to his son, “A strong mind sees things in their true proportion; a weak one views them through a magnifying medium; which, like the microscope, makes an elephant of a flea; magnifies all little objects, but cannot receive great ones.”
We are innately inclined to be tribal, parochial and fearful of anything different. Travel is a wonderful escape from that cloistered narrowness that invites enmity or strife. You quickly discover that the DNA of the species is the same everywhere irrespective of race, religion, gender, nationality or ethnicity. The same bell-shaped curve showing the distribution of virtue and vice is the same across artificial differences. Travel reminds you of the memorable words of Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice,” which apply equally to any persecuted religion:
“Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.”
To the extent people travel and experience face-to-face encounters, the world becomes more peaceful, wealthy and tolerant. It is no accident that historically cities that were international trading hubs raced forward in riches, culture, and interethnic, interracial, and interreligious amity while their more remote, isolated cohorts remained stationary. Rome, Constantinople and Antwerp were exemplary.
Candide drew the wrong lesson in traveling the world with Dr. Pangloss, observing its imperfections, and deciding to tend to his own gardens in despair. The poet John Donne drew the right lesson:
“No man is an island,
Entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
As well as if a promontory were:
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were.
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.”
Armstrong Williams (www.armstrongwilliams.com; @arightside) is a political analyst, syndicated columnist and owner of the broadcasting company, Howard Stirk Holdings. He is also part owner of The Baltimore Sun.
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