One of the many great things about seeing and living other countries is that you feel the beauty of diversity first hand in your bone and you really start appreciating how we are all in this together on the planet. The more you see the more of a dimension you add to mind, you become more open minded and tolerant.
There are a lot of people who hardly ever leave their home and lead uneventful life. I am not at all again it. My parent is like that, living in a village on a fairly small island where I grew. They are perfectly happy. It was only a few years ago that my mum went overseas for the first time, overseas, right next door to their island only a few hour ferry away. And that was not quite for fun but something like a field trip.
Not for me. I would like to see other places and meet people. The actual seeing and feeling with the first hand sensation is crucial for me to approximating what is out there of a sheer pleasure that I can get out of travelling, so fundamental and sustainable that I hope to draw good feelings from whenever I need it, not only chasing quick entertainments for fun which i think is ok and we all need them to a degree.
I don’t think one necessarily needs to adapt to different ways of things people do but what is important is you become aware of it. And that should not be in the tone of judging but accepting as they are. If you judge them, you inevitably judge yourself. You cannot judge others on one scale and you yourself on another. If you could it means you are a supa self-centred spinelessly narrow-minded jerk. And that is not the way to go.
Studying overseas, marrying, a job offered, an extended period of backpacking, for whatever reason one has ended up abroad, one can take advantage of this opportunity to see directly through your own visual cortex with nothing in between. Reading adventure books and watching national geographic is fun and you can get vicarious satisfaction but never the first hand sensation that gets in your blood.
What is equally vital is keep mind’s eyes open. Many people tend to fall prey to thinking, when they come across something foreign, that it is strange and just write it off. If mind is closed you only see what you expect to see. Like a horse with a blinker on, you just go after what you are after and cannot see in peripheral visions which, more often than that, are things you do not want to miss out, filled with adventure.
