By Melanated Glow
Although some people travel during the year, Summer is when a lot of people take vacations. They save and plan all year to visit or revisit another area of the nation or the World. Experiencing another environment, dialect, landscape, and culture allows our minds to expand. As much as traveling opens the minds of adults, it does so much more for our young people with their developing thought processes.
There are social media pages dedicated to traveling as a family with their children. Although traveling, especially out of the country, with our children should be automatic, at times it is not as common. I definitely understand that we cannot give what we do not have, so there is sometimes a need to experience something before exposing our children to it. This is valid as long as the children are the primary objective. Other races visit resorts with their children to the point it becomes a norm for them.
Collectively we are at a point in our journey that we are teaching our youth things that we have acquired later in our lives. This is due to the information made available now versus what was accessible before. This new generation, being a technology age, has its benefits in that we can virtually experience different parts of the World that we couldn’t have before in the comfort of our homes. Social Media allows us the opportunity to connect with those globally that we did not have access to before its existence.
While that is true, it is also true that to experience something firsthand in the physical is different from hearing a story, seeing someone’s post, or using Google Earth to see the terrain. Those things are more of a simulated or synthetic experience than the authentic exploration of another area. The effects on our psyche and thought process are also different.
Whether traveling by car, van, bus, plane or boat, every trip is new. Even if you’ve flown 20+ times, each time is different. Whether it be a different airline, different airport, different destination, different plane, different travel time, or different day, something is different. We come in contact with those that we are destined to. Some connections would not be possible if it weren’t for being in the same place at the same time. These nuances add to our experiences that make us who we are.
Travel itself belongs to our people innately through our DNA. We created vessels to travel in and then taught others. We were able to give our wisdom because we acquired it. We learned because we observed. It is through observation that we can sufficiently compare and contrast situations to arrive at true conclusions. It is this experience that our children need to make the best decisions. When we have more information, our perception is more defined. It is impossible to make a full conclusion with only pieces of the relevant information, and this is what has been happening to us as a people.
For our thought process to expand, we must be exposed to a variety of things. It is understanding what is going on globally that we can see the connection of what we all are experiencing worldwide as melanated beings. How much more do our children need to connect the dots and see the relationship. Once we see that we are truly one we can then begin making decisions and participating in actions that benefit us for centuries to come. Let’s see the World as this is our ancestral right!
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