Why do we travel?

One of my favorite quotes comes from Mark Twain. Talking about what travel does to one’s worldview, he wrote in Innocents Abroad, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” While I agree with Twain’s quote on the surface level, I want to take a moment and push back regarding his assertions.

I do think that travel broadens one’s perspective and it aids in breaking down “prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” However, in order for these barriers to crumble, the traveler must be open to the experiences and people that he or she will encounter on the journey. Every traveler, no matter the place of origin, carriers within themselves their own feelings and beliefs, and these things can serve cause the traveler to become closed off to the insights that travel provides.

Lillian Smith, in the prologue of her 1954 book The Journey, described the things that follow us on on travels. She writes,

There is no going alone on a journey. Whether one explores strange lands or Main Street or…