Doing is Believing

I knew I loved traveling and going on adventures, but I was never actually sure why. Whether it be because I could make my friends jealous by posting neat pictures of exotic places or because I could stop being jealous myself from seeing my friends doing the same, I could not quite say before. Now, however, I have come to realize exactly what drives this passion for exploration and motivation for diversity- a new perspective.

As a child I always thought America was the only country in the world and that all the seemingly flawless pictures of various foreign places (yes, those images that put postcard pictures to shame) were made up to give American society a global perspective, even if it is was a pseudo-perspective.

At this point you are probably questioning my knowledge of simple world geography (well probably my knowledge of life in general), but this essentially shows the generalized American self-centered consciousness. I mean, it is not at all a typical American move to believe that America is the only country in the world. (Can you sense my sarcasm?) It is certainly one thing to believe without evidence, but it is another to become fully realized of your belief after obtaining evidence. Yes that sounded scientific, but it really is simple- doing, not simply seeing, is believing.

It is difficult to believe (or more realistically, fully realize) that the Berlin Wall, and other diverse worldly artifacts, actually exists sometimes, as the naive child me did. A simple photograph taken by some photographer that eventually found its way onto the Internet or book and was probably photoshopped and severely edited is not very convincing to a starry-eyed wanderer dying to explore the world. However, going to the Berlin Wall itself as we did on our first day in the city of Berlin was when it truly hit me that all the history I pulled all-nighters reading back in high school was indeed a real application to the world and that it did indeed occur.

One does not truly understand or realize how magnificent or real something is until he or she is there doing and seeing it in the moment. Once it fully occurs that all that textbook information and all those postcard pictures are certainly what they are made out to be, a new way of thinking forms. It's called a global perspective. And it is, in fact, the reason I love traveling.