Months after returning home, memories of Bali still transfix me. From a sojourn to the Rotary International Conference in Singapore, we made a family bucket-list vacation come true. We blew our civic and architectural minds in Singapore, and then we flew to Bali. We weren’t there long enough — like Tantalus reaching for something just out of grasp — but our fleeting time there stamped itself on my soul. That may sound a bit saccharine, but it feels true: Of all the places on our epic journey last summer, Bali remains the emotional highlight. Compared to the high-polish architectural modernity of Singapore, Bali felt more worlds apart — rooted, sacred, stirring.
I’ve discovered there’s a quiet life force in traveling with respectful intention: observing local customs, honoring traditions, letting your perspective stretch beyond its usual shape. Travel like this is one of the purest ways to learn about shared humanity — and, I’d argue, one of the most necessary.
Real travel isn’t just a break from work or a social media flex. It’s a slow, reverent widening of your mental aperture — an anthropology of the soul.
You don’t have to cross an ocean for that kind of transformation. Whether you’re going to Cairo, Egypt, or to the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, there are residents to respect, things to learn, and lessons to take with you back home. The best kind of travel — global or domestic — asks something of you. It asks you to be a better guest, a better listener, a more generous student of the world.
The challenge, of course, is walking the tightrope between wonder and respect. In places where beauty and tradition are often commodified for the traveler’s gaze, it’s all too easy to become a cold consumer of someone else’s sacred story. I’ve thought often of a line from a recent essay in The Surfer’s Journal, among other things briefly comparing Hawaiian tourists to resort rats — sun-screened parasites slowly bleaching the coral reefs. It’s not entirely wrong. But it’s not the whole story, either. Because travel done right changes you — not in the influencer-posing-by-infinity-pool kind of way, but in the way that rearranges your inner furniture. It opens your eyes to how life is lived in its infinite variety, and forces you to question assumptions you didn’t even know you were making. It reminds you how different — and yet how alike — we all are.
At the Rotary International conference in Singapore, a highlight was meeting Felix, a Maasai chief, and finding myself discussing customs I’d only encountered in undergraduate anthropology courses. This conversation wasn’t a lecture or derived from a book. This was real life: standing with Felix, listening, questioning, and then being asked to lock hands with his chief ’s talking stick to show the spirit of Tenebo — “together,” in the Maasai language. A face-to-face conversation between two people from radically different worlds, grounded in mutual curiosity and respect. That’s what travel makes possible. That’s why it matters.
With anti-immigrant sentiment on the rise, it’s more important than ever to cultivate the empathy that real travel can foster. When you have shared meals or traded stories across cultural lines, it becomes that much harder to swallow the fear narratives that dominate certain political talking points.
Travel reminds us that the world isn’t divided between “us” and “them.” It’s an endlessly complex, beautifully overlapping “we.” Tenebo. And that global empathy doesn’t stay behind on the plane when you land. It travels with you — into your neighborhood, your workplace, and your home. It teaches you to see differently, to listen longer, to live with more curiosity and humility.
The best kind of travel leaves you challenged, changed, and connected. That’s not just good for the traveler. That’s good for the world, as well as the communities where we live.
Philip R. Hooper is a real estate broker and development consultant with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Indiana Realty in Evansville. A past president of the Rotary Club of Evansville, he is passionate about architecture, historic preservation, and community development.
