I want you to travel. I want you to think about where you will go when you're 18, 22, when you're 66.
Take out a sheet of paper and a pen or pencil. Write at the top: Top 5 Places I Will Go To. Do not write Top 5 Places I Want to Go To. Will. Take out your social studies books, go to a library, get on the internet. Find 4 places you will visit that is outside of the United States, 4 you really want to go to.
What places? I don't know.
Think about your favorite music, your favorite movies, your favorite video games. Think about the pictures you would see in Social Studies. Think about the picture books read to you when you were in elementary school. Ask your parents, your teachers, your neighbors. Go to the 910's section at your local public library and browse the travel guides. Go to the J 910's, the YA 910's. Look at maps. What features do you want? Do you want cities? Do you want mountains? Beaches?
Write down your top 4. My top 4? Spain, UK, Japan, Germany or France. This is what I would've selected in my middle school or high school days. Spain for my favorite films from Pedro Almodovar and Luis Bunuel. UK for my ancestry. Japan because of samurai films. German or France for ancestral and Europhile reasons.
Your header says "Top 5." So where's the 5th? Now find a place that you never considered. Find a place your parents wouldn't recommend. Find a place that you hear negatively about in the news. Find a place that is a misfit, a place no one would think about it, a place like Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Tanzania, Georgia (the country), Slovenia, India, or Timor Leste. These are place you never knew were a country. You don't have to pick a country like North Korea or Belarus, a place that may or may not have an U.S. Embassy.
Now research that place. You may find beauty. If your parents are neglectful of what you watch, Kazakhstan may be Borat for you, but the capital, Astana, is as futuristic as any megalopolis in China. It is bordered by mountains, just like Slovenia is, a country that has three mountain ranges and is as Alpine as Germany. Tanzania has the Serengeti and Mount Kilimanjaro. Iran has the architecture you saw in Aladdin, people who want to feed you and know you, and it even has drinkable tap water.
When you have your top 5, research ticket prices off Kayak, Orbitz, etc. Research prices for hotels and hostels. Create a budget.
Save that budget. Go to all of these places before you have children. Go to all of these places before you settle in a place. Go to all of these places before you buy a house.
Why?
Each place you go is a library. Mount Kilimanjaro is a library of the beauty of Earth. A coffeeshop in Austria is a library of daily life, of older people discussing their experiences. A open air market is a library of how people develop relationships.
You need this knowledge. You need to know that in the grand scheme of eternity your problems are specks. Carl Sagan spoke of a pale blue dot. It is important to keep a perspective that life is tragically beautiful. Mount Kilimanjaro will exist far longer than humanity will. There are people who have inherited a life completely different than you, albeit one with a common ancestor. Your life will always matter to your family, to your friends, to loved ones. But you need these libraries for empathy, to normalize the pain of existence. No matter how embarrassed you might feel by your parents, by possible B.O., by the fear you may always be alone, take stock that worse things have happened and mountains and people are still here.
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