There is something romantic about the world being a diverse

“There is something romantic about the world being a diverse place, where every place has a Starbucks and Denny’s.” So speaks Tom Green, with humor upon his lips but also a strange wisdom hidden in jest. For in his words lies a reflection on the paradox of modern life: that we yearn for diversity, yet also find comfort in the familiar. The romance he names is not of roses and candlelight, but of the curious union between the uniqueness of each land and the sameness of symbols that bind us across oceans.

In the ancients’ eyes, this truth would not be foreign. For they, too, sought a balance between the local and the universal. The Greeks carried their temples and columns into foreign lands; the Romans built aqueducts and forums wherever their legions went. And so, though provinces differed in language, in climate, in custom, the traveler could still recognize Rome in every stone arch. What Starbucks and Denny’s are to us, the forum and amphitheater were to them: signs that no matter how far one wandered, there was a thread that tied the world together.

To call this romantic is to see beauty in what others might call mundane. For what is romance, if not the art of finding wonder in the ordinary? The traveler who sets foot in Tokyo, Paris, or Buenos Aires and still finds the green mermaid of Starbucks is reminded that amidst the dizzying strangeness of culture, there are islands of familiarity. This tension between the strange and the known is what gives travel its bittersweet joy. It is as though the soul says: “I am far from home, yet not lost.”

Consider the story of Marco Polo, who journeyed into the heart of Asia. What he found astonished him: cities more splendid than Venice, customs beyond imagining. Yet amidst all the strangeness, he sought analogies to what he already knew. He described the Khan’s court in terms familiar to Europeans, for his mind needed the comfort of recognition. In this, we see the timeless truth of Green’s observation: humans crave diversity, but they also anchor themselves with threads of sameness.

But let us not take this as a lament for the spread of sameness. Instead, let us hear the deeper teaching: that in a world of both difference and familiarity, there is a kind of harmony. For without diversity, life grows stale, each land a mirror of the other. Yet without familiarity, the traveler may feel unmoored, adrift in seas too vast to comprehend. The two together create the rhythm of wonder: the thrill of the unknown balanced by the comfort of the known.

The lesson, then, is clear. Do not scorn the symbols of global familiarity, nor lose yourself entirely in them. Instead, let them serve as waypoints on your journey, small hearths of comfort that give you courage to explore the wider unknown. Drink your coffee, then step into the local market. Rest in the diner, then walk the streets where stories are written in another tongue. Let the balance between sameness and strangeness teach you to embrace the whole world, not just fragments of it.

Therefore, beloved seeker, when you travel through this earth, look with two eyes: one that delights in the new, and one that cherishes the familiar. See the romance not only in foreign landscapes and diverse tongues, but also in the gentle reminder that you are still connected to humanity wherever you go. For in this paradox lies a truth as old as empires and as fresh as a morning cup of coffee—that the world is vast, and yet, in its heart, it is one.