Too many people have told me they have no desire to travel, and I have promised trips to people who never took me up on them, and I genuinely need to know why, I need to understand what is keeping you, because two nights ago I was in a Budapest bath with four Romani men who broke through every language barrier between us to tell me I was very much like them and their people, and you don’t want that? You don’t want to bike across Corfu to meet a stranger from a dating app to get head on an unbed and later compare your story to Leonard and Janis’s? You don’t want to meet up with your favorite people who happen to be Belgian while you’re in Belgium and they tell you everything they learned about the local beers in the five hours you have until your flight leaves? There is a bus full of strangers waiting for you in Bogota and the girl you don’t know yet but will come to know as one of your most incredible friends will hand you a bottle of disgusting liqueur and it is imperative that you drink it, and nine days in Johannesburg can turn into three years and a week in Thailand can turn into the nastiest, sexiest moments in the journals you hope they don’t find until you’re dead, and you don’t want that? The dog you ate in Accra that you thought was goat and the cow you slaughtered in Limpopo will be the icebreakers you need when you’re new to a company and you need folks to know how mildly wild you are, and your walks through the favelas at night to press your body against a stranger in a small structure with a picture window to see the ocean, and the ER in Oaxaca, the doctors in Amsterdam, the dentists in Saigon, God, the pho, bun cha, and snails in Saigon, and the lover you’re with and the oceans you’ll dive into and the dreams that will take shape because of the world, and when you say to someone that they have the most wonderful smile in the world it will be true because you will now know how unlikely it was that you met your soul mate in high school and how likely it is that you met them in Galway then Stockholm then Maboneng, and then you will show your children or your nieces and nephews where you left gum on street signs in Montreal and blood on curbs in Tangier. I am begging you. If you can, go.
