“Traveling is like falling in love; the world is made new again." Jan Myrdal
Its such a strange feeling, being in love with the world. Accepting the land, the people, the cultures, and the governments, better or worse, simply for what they are. You cant begin to explain why it is you love the odd things about people; moles, birthmarks, odd digits, snaggle teeth, and so on. These oddities that make us unique are in a way like the countries I've visited. Every person is different, as is every country. They live by a set of rules, sometimes the same and sometimes different from our own. Cultures have their own likes and dislikes, ways of relating, of showing affections, and perform in a variety of work environments.
I must admit, the world isn't as different as I thought it would be, at least different in the way I thought it would be. People are people, and we are all governed by the same set of invisible rules that makes us so. We feel happy and sad, stressed, eagar, and we all hope to communicate such things to the world. Some of us are far more fortunate than others, and for some, dying is just a part of every day life.
The idea of freedom has been threatened in my mind, once defined as having the capability of doing anything you wanted any time you wanted to do it. This definition leaves out one very important aspect. Safety, and the rights to live. Not a threat by gunpoint or by anyone in fact. Rather the threat to life is having the ability to earn or grow food, to be able to medicate or treat an illness, or even having the possibility to obtain clean drinking water. For them, freedom means simply a bottle of water, a loaf of bread, and a healthy body.
I've taken these things for granted my whole life, everyone seems to have these freedoms, or so I thought. I didn't even consider the hard working families who live in the street gutters who will never have the freedom of education. I'm still understanding that and education means having the ability to think, problem solve, and create solutions to everyday problems. I've always been able to do this, I just never knew how free it made me.
