As a kid, a long one-way train ride from Louisiana to California took me out of the Asthma Belt and into a place where I literally could breathe. Along the way, it showed me a world beyond the one I knew. It taught me to imagine, to wonder, to dream.
In more ways than one, that trip saved my life, and I've been traveling ever since. It's my life-long education, my concert hall without walls, my global picnic. It never gets old.
Five or six decades ago, we didn't feel the need to learn much about other places, or other peoples. They were far away. They had little impact on our lives. They didn't matter.
We could get away with that in the last century. We won't in this one.
Let's take the mystery, confusion and fear out of travel. Let's see how it works (and ways that it can work better), how it can benefit your life, and your children's lives, how it can strengthen us as a nation and help lift us up as a people.
Many years and many journeys later, travel is still finding new ways to help me breathe. And it can do the same for you.
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