“ Undertand the country, and you will be fine. You will survive.”
My dad taught me when I was a child. I never understood it. As I grew up, his words faded away.
In page 222, Neal and Jack has a serious conversation on how one can be fine traveling anywhere in the country if one knows one part of the country well enough and the native language of that country. That is because every inch of the country are the same and the people are the same. This reminded me of what my dad taught me. I wonder what it means to be able to understand the country and to be able to speak in the language spoken in that country.
I personally think this is something someone can understand once they go on a long Journey, after experiencing being far away from their home, or someone that has been on the road once.
1 comment:
I'm not sure I believe that people are the same everywhere your travels may take you. Experience is everything. Citizens of the United States and other privileged nations, you are more likely to find people metaphorically deaf, blind, and dumb. We have been blind to what people elsewhere might need, and how they might live. We have refused to heed the cries of those who lack the basic supplies. And when we see something that we do not believe to be correct, many of us keep quiet about it, for fear of our standings, until it is already too late. We have succumbed at first to the seduction and now to the hold that wealth uses to bring us into this stupor and keep us there.
In other parts of the world, people lacking such possessions have consequentially failed to pick up the numbing effect that it brings. As they are less attached to the physical, they are noticeably less hesitant in sharing it. They have looked less to possessions for joy, instead turning more to themselves, others, and their environment, making for much more fulfilled people.
These are both, of course, sweeping generalizations. However, I have done a small amount of travelling, but there are definite differences between the average American and the average human of a country that finds itself on the other side of the economic spectrum.
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