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Location: Johannesburg, South Africa

"It is for want of self-culture that the superstition of Travelling, whose idols are Italy, England, Egypt, retains its fascination for all educated Americans. They who made England, Italy, or Greece venerable in the imagination did so by sticking fast where they were, like an axis of the earth. In manly hours, we feel that duty is our place. The soul is no traveller; the wise man stays at home, and when his necessities, his duties, on any occasion call him from his house, or into foreign lands, he is at home still, and shall make men sensible by the expression of his countenance, that he goes the missionary of wisdom and virtue, and visits cities and men like a sovereign, and not like an interloper or a valet.

I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the globe, for the purposes of art, of study, and benevolence, so that the man is first domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope of finding somewhat greater than he knows. He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from himself, and grows old even in youth among old things. In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind have become old and dilapidated as they. He carries ruins to ruins.

"Travelling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go."

--Emerson, Self Reliance

This was my favorite essay in school, and one I still re-read regularly for inspiration. And as much as I have traveled already and will continue to travel, I agree with a lot of what Emerson says here. I will not "find myself" by traveling--that is not the purpose.

Like most people, I seek to live a meaningful life, to become like the "they who made England, Italy, or Greece venerable." But if I must do so by staying at home, where is home? Is home limited to the United States, or to metropolitan Boston, or even to Wellesley, Massachusetts? My point is, if I want to make a difference in the world, why must I limit myself to my immediate environment. If there are greater opportunities in Africa, isn't that the place to go? Emerson came from a land filled with people who had left home for that very reason, and who accomplished great things.