“Traveling is supposed to be finding out how truly insignificant you are. It’s supposed to be about discovering how little you know. In a foreign land, you are the ignorant one. And people will laugh at you for it. If you go as a tourist, do not be expected the same treatment as an invited guest, nor as a prodigal child. When you are the tourist, you are a visitor, uninvited, with no knowledge of the mores, and these people owe you no confidences. No matter how much you try to fit in.
If you want to make it about yourself, then make it about how you manage to love yourself despite knowing how worthless you are in the face of a very, very, large world, and how you manage to love others for making you see this truth.
Being a tourist, being able to visit countries abroad, being able to expand your horizons in this way… these are hallmarks of privilege. These are opportunities only certain people have, usually those with some power in the world that enables them to open these doors. And if you open these doors and breeze through them into rooms not your own, expecting everyone to simply accept you, then you really have a special flavour of ignorance that deserves to be mocked.”
