I often claim to be a “citizen of the world” — which I am. We all are, and if more of us felt that way, then maybe we’d stop being unkind to each other on the basis of nationality, skin colour or religion.
OK, I won’t hold my breath on that. But maybe if we viewed the Earth as our home, we’d look after the planet a lot better than we do.
Umm, yeah. Well, we can only hope.
Anyway, what I really want to say here is that, while I do regard the entire world as my backyard, it sometimes feels good to have a point of origin to return to. Which is what I’ve done by coming to Brisbane, Queensland, Australia for a couple of weeks.
Brisbane is where I was born, and where I’ve lived for most of my life. And while I love to travel, it’s where I will always return, if only for holidays, for as long as I have family and friends here. Which, I guess, means for the rest of my life.
The need to earn money doing what I can do means I now reside in the United Arab Emirates, and I suspect that’s going to be the case for the immediate future. But even if I did live in Australia (or anywhere else for that matter), I would still find as many excuses as I could to travel.
The bucket list is getting longer. The more I read about distant places, the more I want to see them. All of them . Or at least as many as are practicable (and safe).
While it’s great to know that there’s always somewhere that feels like home, it’s even more reassuring to know that there’s a whole world waiting to be discovered. Not just by me, but by everyone.
By writing this, I’ve reminded myself of a 70-something man I once got talking to in a waiting room at Brisbane’s Wesley Hospital. The conversation got around to travel, and he told me he’d never left Australia until after he retired, when he and his wife went to Italy.
“You know, Australia’s pretty good,” he told me. “But it’s pretty good over there, too.”
