I have come to a point in my life where I don’t actually look forward to travelling anymore. I feel like I haven’t gotten enough of SF even after two years, so I am always leaving her with my heart heavy.
I have fallen in love with other cities, but it is always SF that feels like home. It doesn’t matter where I go, how much I loved my experiences while travelling – ultimately I still want to be back home.
I have flown into Seoul with a serious case of homesickness. I was supposed to stay here for 10 days, only to half my trip so I can be back earlier. It isn’t the first time I have written about feeling this way, and probably wouldn’t be the last.
But being in Seoul reminded me why I force travelling upon myself. As much as I love being in SF, it has admittedly turned into a comfort zone for me. In some ways I am so blinded by the peace I feel, that it has become more challenging to have my thoughts and emotions provoked.
It is during my travels that I become acutely aware of the diverse beauty of humanity, that no matter where I am, grace seems to find me in unexpected places. I found myself thinking today while looking at the people attempting to make the best out of their own lives, in ways they know of – that this world is worth saving, it is worth working hard to preserve the work of our human forefathers.
I don’t always believe that is true. Half the time I really don’t feel any sympathy if we self-destruct. Considering that we pride production over preserving our source of oxygen and that we seem not to mind using the ocean as a garbage dump, it is difficult for me to envision us surviving the rate of destruction we’re causing to this beautiful planet.
Yet it is during these travels, these travels I force upon myself, that I get reminded over and over again, we can be a species capable of so much depth and intensity.
I just wish we can be much better at maximizing our human capital instead of putting our kids through factory lines of numbing education and false narratives. Or that one day soon, we will recognize that diversity is neccessary to our own evolution, so we can stop treating poverty and disempowered minorities like it is not our problem to solve.