Where to Live, and When to Leave
“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.”
The greatest tragedy of modern life is not its brevity, but its slow descent into inertia: the comfortable oblivion of those who never leave their birthplace, never test their assumptions, never see the world through another culture's eyes. Travel, at its best, is not tourism but immersion, not escape but confrontation. It is an exercise in shedding the provincialism of one's upbringing and acquiring a broader sense of what it means to be human. And yet, just as travel educates, it also corrupts. Every city, every civilization, has its seductions, and if one is not careful, they will dull the edge of one's intellect, soften the spine, and induce a fatal complacency.
Europe: The Good Life, and the Slow Death
To live in Europe, even briefly, is to understand what it means to live well. There is a civilised pace to life, an unspoken agreement that existence should be savored rather than endured. The wines are finer, the conversations longer, the ambitions tempered by a healthy contempt for excess. A long lunch in Paris, a siesta in Madrid, a morning espresso in Rome: these are not mere indulgences but small affirmations that life should be lived on one's own terms, not dictated by the tyranny of the time clock.
And yet, linger too long in this comfortable, aging continent and one finds oneself seduced by its inertia. The same cultural refinement that elevates the spirit can also become a narcotic, dulling the impulse to strive and create. In much of Europe, the dreams of youth give way to the comforts of routine. The social democracies of the West promise cradle-to-grave security, but at what cost? Ambition atrophies, the appetite for risk diminishes, and the great existential challenge of life - what to do with one's fleeting years - is outsourced to the state. Leave before you succumb to this slow euthanasia of the soul.
London: The Crucible of Humanity, and Its Toll
London, in many ways, is not a city but a test. It is where the world collides, where accents and aspirations blend in the swirl of commerce and chaos. To live in London is to learn how to navigate the sheer unpredictability of human nature, how to read a room, how to survive in a place where no one has time for sentimentality. It is a metropolis of the most staggering diversity, a Babel that somehow functions despite itself. One emerges from it tougher, sharper, and infinitely more adept at dealing with any individual from any background.
But the city demands its pound of flesh. Stay too long, and the necessary armour you develop becomes too thick, the skepticism too automatic. You learn to expect duplicity, to measure people by their utility rather than their character. You begin to see kindness as naivety, generosity as weakness. The charm of London, its intoxicating mix of grit and glamour, eventually gives way to a colder realisation: that in a city where everyone is passing through, genuine connection is as fleeting as a cab on a rainy night. Leave before cynicism becomes your default setting.
The United States: The Dream Machine, and the Debt It Demands
America is where one goes to dream. The sheer audacity of the place is intoxicating - here, the impossible is not only entertained but actively pursued. The American genius is in its ability to make you believe that anything is within reach, that the barriers of birth and background can be overcome by sheer will and ingenuity. It is an empire of optimism, a great sprawling testament to human ambition unshackled by history.
But dreams, as every American eventually learns, come at a cost. The culture that celebrates limitless opportunity also ensures that you are never truly off the clock. Work is no longer a means to an end but an identity, a religion. The pursuit of wealth is both a moral imperative and a trap, a treadmill that never quite stops. Even those who succeed find themselves enslaved by their success - tied to the obligations of maintaining it, forever looking over their shoulder at the younger, hungrier version of themselves coming up behind them. Stay too long, and you will forget that there was ever another way to live. Leave before your self-worth is measured in productivity and profit.
Asia: The Future, and Its Watching Eyes
To live in Asia is to see what the world will become. It is a glimpse into the inevitable - megacities rising overnight, technology integrating seamlessly into daily life, the fusion of tradition with relentless progress. There is an energy, a dynamism, that is unmatched anywhere else. If the future belongs to anyone, it belongs to Asia.
But with progress comes surveillance, and with order comes control. The same systems that promise efficiency also demand obedience. One learns, after a while, to lower their voice, to second-guess what they type, to glance over their shoulder in the knowledge that someone, somewhere, is always watching. The Western illusion that privacy is a right quickly fades. There is an unspoken bargain: prosperity in exchange for submission. Stay long enough, and the boundaries between convenience and control begin to blur. Leave before you forget what it means to think freely.
The Art of Knowing When to Leave
To move through the world with wisdom is to know not only where to go, but when to go. Every place, every culture, has something to offer and something to take away. The key is to extract the lessons, to absorb the best of what each civilization has to teach, and then to move on before its drawbacks become one's own.
Stay anywhere too long, and you risk becoming a product of that place rather than its student. The challenge of modern life is to remain both engaged and detached - to experience the richness of the world without becoming trapped by its illusions. For in the end, the greatest journey is not across borders but within oneself, and the greatest mistake is to believe that any one place holds all the answers.