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The Unfinished Masterpiece: Why Travel is Essential to a Well-Lived Life

There’s a painting in the back of my gallery by a young Ohioan artist. It’s an abstract piece, full of deep blues and turbulent greys, but in the very center is a sliver of brilliant, hopeful gold. I often think of that painting as a metaphor for a life lived in one place. It can be beautiful, complex, and full of depth, but without exposure to the wider world, a crucial color is missing. At fifty-five, having spent my life curating the visions of others, I’ve come to believe that travel is the act of adding those missing colors to our own canvas. It’s not a luxury or a simple vacation; it is a vital and necessary part of our education as human beings. Travel is the process by which we complete the masterpiece of ourselves.

We are, by nature, curious creatures. We are built to wonder what lies beyond the next hill, across the ocean, on the other side of the planet. To suppress that instinct is to live a life in monochrome. The great humorist and perhaps even greater travel writer, Mark Twain, understood this perfectly when he wrote his most enduring observation on the subject.

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

Fatal. What a powerful choice of word. Not “harmful” or “unhelpful,” but “fatal.” Travel actively kills the ignorance that allows prejudice to thrive. Before I stood in a market in Ocho Rios, my idea of Jamaica was a postcard of beaches and reggae. But to be there, to barter with a craftsman whose hands were stained with the same wood he used to carve a beautiful parrot, to share a laugh over the absurdity of the exchange rate—that experience replaced a flat stereotype with a three-dimensional human being. It’s an experience that cannot be replicated by watching a documentary or reading a book. You have to be there. You have to breathe the air and feel the rhythm of a place to let it change you.

But this change doesn’t always come easily. True travel, the kind that leaves a permanent mark on your soul, often requires a deliberate step out of your comfort zone. It demands that we be vulnerable. The late, great Anthony Bourdain built his career on this very principle. He wasn’t just a chef or a TV host; he was a philosopher of movement, a champion of the uncomfortable.

“If I’m an advocate for anything, it’s to move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. The extent to which you can walk in someone else’s shoes or at least eat their food, it’s a plus for everybody. Open your mind, get up off the couch, move.”

My trip to Monrovia, Liberia, was the epitome of this idea. It was not a comfortable journey. I saw the deep scars of war and the struggle for stability. I saw infrastructure that we in Ohio take for granted simply not exist. It was difficult and, at times, heartbreaking. But in that discomfort, I also witnessed a level of human resilience and creativity that I have never seen elsewhere. I saw artists making powerful statements with nothing but scrap metal and bullet casings. Had I stayed on the sanitized path of tourism, I would have missed that truth. It is in the challenging moments—getting lost in a city where you don’t speak the language, eating a meal you can’t identify, confronting a history as painful as South Africa’s—that we discover our own capacity for empathy and adaptation.

Ultimately, the outward journey always sparks an inward one. When you are removed from the familiar routines and expectations of your daily life, you are forced to confront yourself in a new way. The writer David Mitchell captured this succinctly: “Travel far enough, you meet yourself.” In the pristine order of Toronto, I saw my own American tendencies in sharper relief. In the profound, haunted beauty of Cape Town, I had to question my own understanding of justice and forgiveness. You become an observer, not just of the world around you, but of the person who is doing the observing. You see who you are when no one knows your history, and you learn what you truly value when your usual comforts are stripped away. This self-discovery is perhaps the most precious souvenir one can bring home.

And the return home is the final, crucial chapter of any journey. It is the moment the lessons of the road crystallize. The poet T.S. Eliot expressed this beautifully:

“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”

Coming back to my quiet street in Ohio after being away is always a revelation. The familiar comforts feel more precious, but I also see my home with new eyes. I see the invisible cultural patterns I never noticed before. I have a deeper appreciation for the safety and stability I enjoy, but also a sharper awareness of the bubbles we can all live in. The world feels simultaneously larger, full of infinite variety, and smaller, connected by the universal threads of human experience—the desire for family, for purpose, for joy. Travel doesn’t just show you the world; it transforms your relationship with your own corner of it.

So, yes, travel. Go see the world. Go as far as you can, as often as you can. It is an investment in the only thing you truly own: your perspective. Travel is the only thing you can buy that truly makes you richer. It will fill your memory banks with colors, textures, and stories that will nourish you for a lifetime. It will make you a more interesting, empathetic, and complete human being. Travel will turn the canvas of your life into a masterpiece you could have never imagined otherwise.

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