I grew up in South Africa and I would look at maps and we were

When Charlize Theron declared, “I grew up in South Africa and I would look at maps and we were at the bottom of the world. There was this whole thing up there. I was always reading encyclopedias about the world. So travel was something I was always attracted to,” she was not only recalling the dreams of her childhood, but giving voice to a truth as old as humanity itself: that the soul longs for horizons beyond its birthplace, that curiosity is the seed of transformation, and that the world is a vast and living book waiting to be read.

The imagery of being at the bottom of the world is powerful. To a child gazing at a map, placement matters; it shapes identity. Theron’s South Africa, drawn at the foot of the globe, seemed far from the centers of history, empire, and legend that filled her encyclopedias. Yet what seemed distance became desire. The very sense of being far away stirred within her the yearning to reach beyond borders, to ascend from the edge to the heart, to transform remoteness into connection. From such feelings are born the great travelers, the seekers, the visionaries who refuse to remain bound by the accidents of geography.

History knows this longing well. Consider the young Marco Polo, who, though raised in Venice, felt the pull of lands unseen. He too studied accounts of far kingdoms, and his desire carried him across deserts and mountains to the court of Kublai Khan. Or think of Ibn Battuta, the Moroccan youth who left home at twenty-one for pilgrimage and did not stop until he had walked the earth’s breadth, from Africa to China. For both men, as for Theron, the spark was first imagination—the vision of a world larger than one’s own, glimpsed in maps, in stories, in books.

The encyclopedia she read as a child was itself a kind of portal. For within its pages lived oceans, peoples, languages, and histories far removed from her own experience. In those quiet hours of reading, Theron was already traveling, her mind moving across continents, her spirit tasting the vastness of the human story. The lesson here is profound: before the body journeys, the mind must first wander. All true travel begins in imagination, and it is imagination that calls the traveler forth into the wide world.

Yet Theron’s words also remind us of the courage required to follow this attraction. Many dream of distant lands, but few leave their familiar soil. To act on the yearning of the heart, to step into the unknown, is a hero’s task. It is an act of faith, for one does not know what lies beyond the edge of the map until one dares to go there. She is teaching us that what begins as curiosity in the heart of a child may, if nurtured, lead to a destiny greater than one could ever conceive.

So, dear listener, the lesson is this: do not dismiss the longings of your youth. The questions you asked as a child, the maps you traced with your fingers, the places that filled your imagination—these are not idle fancies but whispers of destiny. If your spirit is stirred by the thought of distant lands, honor that stirring. For it may lead you not only to new places, but to a larger version of yourself.

In practical action, this means: feed your imagination with books, with stories, with maps, just as Theron did. Let curiosity guide you toward learning, and let learning inspire action. Travel if you can, but even when you cannot, seek to know the world through its people, its cultures, its wisdom. Carry within you the mindset of the traveler: open, hungry to learn, and humble before the vastness of creation.

Thus Charlize Theron’s words become more than a memory of childhood—they become a call to us all. To live is to travel, whether with the feet or with the mind, and to refuse to remain at the “bottom of the world” when the whole globe awaits. Let us, like her, gaze upon the map not as a boundary, but as an invitation, and let our lives be journeys of discovery, courage, and wonder.