Beautiful

is my name in the world. Or so you’d think. I hear it from every man and I love it, but it’s never good enough. My big brown eyes sparkle. My smile: reassuring. My hair falling perfectly whichever way I wear it. I feel it would play a different melody. I hear it from every man, but I have never heard it from the man I’ve wanted to hear it from most. I’ve never heard it from you.

I beg young people to travel. If you don’t have a passport, get one. Take a summer, get a backpack and go to Delhi, go to Saigon, go to Bangkok, go to Kenya. Have your mind blown, eat interesting food, dig some interesting people, have an adventure, be careful. Come back and you’re going to see your country differently, you’re going to see your president differently, no matter who it is. Music, culture, food, water. Your showers will become shorter. You’re going to get a sense of what globalization looks like. It’s not what Tom Friedman writes about, I’m sorry. You’re going to see that global climate change is very real. And that for some people, their day consists of walking twelve miles for four buckets of water. And so there are lessons that you can’t get out of a book that are waiting for you at the other end of that flight. A lot of people — Americans and Europeans — come back and go, “Ohhhh.” And the lightbulb goes on.
Henry Rollins (via amandapowell)

(Source: commovente)