Go to foreign countries and you will get to know the good things

In the words of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the sage of the soul and the seer of nations, we hear this timeless reflection: “Go to foreign countries and you will get to know the good things one possesses at home.” At first, it seems a traveler’s musing — simple, almost casual. Yet beneath its quiet tone lies a universal truth: that understanding and gratitude are born from distance, and that one must sometimes leave the warmth of one’s hearth to recognize its glow. Goethe speaks here not only of travel across lands but of the greater pilgrimage of the heart — the journey outward that leads one inward.

In the days of old, the ancients revered travel as a form of transformation. To leave home was not merely to change scenery, but to confront the unknown and, in doing so, rediscover oneself. The Greeks sent their youth to distant shores to learn the arts of wisdom and war; the Chinese sages wandered mountains to meet the silence of heaven. Goethe himself, a man of letters and light, traveled through Italy — and it was there, under foreign skies, that he rediscovered the beauty and order of his own homeland, Germany. His words carry the scent of that revelation: that contrast is the mother of appreciation. One does not know how soft one’s bed is until one has slept on the cold ground of elsewhere.

Consider the story of Odysseus, the wanderer of Homer’s epic. For ten long years he fought to return home, crossing lands of marvel and terror. He feasted with kings, was imprisoned by goddesses, and saw the wide breadth of mortal life. Yet in every vision of grandeur, his heart turned back to Ithaca, to the simple hearth where his wife wove by day and waited by night. When at last he returned, weary and aged, he found no palace of gold — but he found peace, for he had learned what few ever do: that the familiar becomes sacred only after exile. Odysseus’ voyage mirrors Goethe’s teaching — that to know the worth of home, one must first lose sight of it.

There is a quiet tragedy in human nature: the tendency to grow blind to what is near. The water we drink daily seems ordinary; the faces we see each morning fade into the background of habit. But when one steps into a land where the tongue sounds strange and the customs unfamiliar, one begins to feel the pull of the old and the dear. The bread of home, once common, becomes a feast in memory. The laughter of one’s people, once overlooked, becomes music in the mind. Thus, travel humbles the soul — it teaches one to see not with the eyes of possession, but with the eyes of gratitude.

Yet Goethe’s wisdom extends beyond the traveler’s path. For even in life itself, we must sometimes step outside the circle of comfort to rediscover its blessings. Leave the familiar — not only in geography but in spirit. Seek new ways of thought, dwell among those who live differently, walk roads where your name is unknown. You will find, as Goethe did, that every foreign lesson is a mirror reflecting the hidden riches of your own world. To stay always at home is to live half-blind; to wander and return is to see with new sight.

The teaching, then, is twofold. First, go forth — for the soul that never leaves its boundaries grows stagnant, like water that does not flow. Second, when you return, honor what you have. Let travel not breed contempt for the simple, but reverence for it. The purpose of leaving is not to escape, but to learn to cherish what you left behind. This is the secret wisdom of the voyager: that every horizon is a teacher, and every homecoming, a hymn of gratitude.

So, let this be your guide: travel when you can — in body, in mind, in heart. See the world with humility, and let its vastness awaken your awe. But when you stand again on familiar ground, look around you with the eyes of one reborn. Feel the warmth of your own hearth as if for the first time. For as Goethe, the ancient soul in a modern age, has taught us — the road away from home is the road that leads back to gratitude, and the greatest treasure of the traveler is not what he finds abroad, but what he rediscovers within his own walls.