As I wrote last week, the month of April is the 30 Days of Indie Art Project with BootsnAll. So starting today, for the whole month, I will be (attempting) to write a post a day (sometimes 2 on Book Review and Featured Friday Photo days). So the first prompt in this #Indie30 challenge is :
How has your view of the world changed because of travel?
Answer:
“We are all the same”.
That is how my view has changed.
When I started traveling, I wanted to learn and show everyone’s differences. I wanted to show all the differences between cultures. I wanted to learn how people dress, eat, what they dream, what they want. But really quickly, I learned that this is all bullsh*t.
There are, of course, some cultural differences (what we consider ‘meat vs pet’ for example), and there are individual differences (see photo above: I prefer travel and warm beaches, my sister prefers homesteading and things that she can hang mittens to dry on), but once I started traveling and getting to know people, I realized that we really are all the same. We all want good food, someone (family or friends) to share happiness with, and especially, to be happy.
What might make each of us happy varies, same as what we consider good food, what we look for in friends, but that’s really what everyone wants. And my original view of “Show the differences” keeps you from making real connections. It puts other’s at a distance from you, and invites ethnocentric viewing. Once you get to know individuals as humans, rather than ‘strange objects of interest’ , you realize that humans in general are truly “all the same”.
This is how travel has changed my view of the world. I no longer look for the big cultural or group differences. I look to make human connections with people, and learn what foods, they, as an individual, like, who their friends are, what music they listen to…aka: WHAT MAKES THEM HAPPY. When you realize how similar everyone is, no matter where they come from, the world becomes a much smaller and much less scary place.
Because when you get down to it, we really are all the same.
About Dani Blanchette
