Reflections on Columbus Day

It is Columbus Day, my office is closed.  I am not a fan of Columbus.  The claim that he "discovered" north America bugs me.  There is convincing evidence that other Europeans had been here long before, many people knew of a vast land between Europe and Asia.  There were people living in developed societies here. The logs from Columbus's journey have been translated and published, I have read them, he was very disparaging of the people he encountered.  They didn't live like Europeans, so he dismissed them as being barely human, hardly suitable for service as slaves.  Someone expressing such bigotry today, would not be honored with a national holiday.

Travel is a great adventure, and a tremendous learning opportunity.  A high school friend posted on FB the other day that Boris Yeltsin developed serious doubts about socialism, when visiting a super market in Houston Texas and was astounded by the abundance of food.  Travel changed his view, changed the political course of a nation, and the shaped the history of humankind.  I try to travel with open eyes and an open mind.  When I was a teenager I was moving back and forth between Michigan and Florida. Just in that short 1,200 mile difference, I found that people thought and lived differently, it was also the first place I encountered people who said, "we don't care how you do it up north."   And you know, I learned a lot from the native Floridians.

I love going off around the world - I have been in 12 time zones this year- and seeing what people think, what they eat, what they value, what their fears and dreams are. Columbus traveled with a closed mind.  We all measure the world against our understanding of the world.  The key to opening the adventure of travel, is to see the world with an open mind of possibilities. There is much to be learned from people and places that are different from back home.