Travel early and travel often. Live abroad, if you can.

Hear the words of Tom Freston, spoken like a commandment for all seekers: “Travel early and travel often. Live abroad, if you can. Understand cultures other than your own. As your understanding of other cultures increases, your understanding of yourself and your own culture will increase exponentially.” These are not idle suggestions, but a summons to expansion, a call to step beyond the narrow circle of the familiar and into the vastness of the human story. For he declares that the road is not only a path through the world, but a mirror into the self.

The essence of his saying is that travel is a teacher greater than any book, and the world is a classroom more profound than any hall of stone. To move beyond one’s homeland, to dwell among others, to taste their food, to hear their songs, to witness their sorrows and joys—this is to be transformed. The traveler learns that truth is many-sided, that humanity wears countless faces, and that no single land holds the whole of wisdom. Yet, paradoxically, in discovering the other, one comes to know one’s own roots with greater clarity, as though a reflection once dim has been polished by the light of experience.

This wisdom was known to the ancients. Consider the tale of Herodotus, the Greek who wandered far and wide to write of the customs of Egyptians, Persians, and Scythians. His work, The Histories, was not only a record of foreign lands, but a revelation to his own people: through the mirror of others, the Greeks came to see themselves anew. Likewise, Ibn Battuta, the Moroccan traveler, spent decades crossing Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. His journeys shaped not only his knowledge of the world, but deepened his understanding of his own faith, culture, and identity. Such lives are proof of Freston’s wisdom: that to go outward is to also go inward.

Freston counsels that one must travel early and travel often, for youth is pliable, like fresh clay, easily molded by experience. When young, the soul absorbs more deeply, the mind stretches more readily, the heart opens more easily to difference. To plant the seeds of global understanding in youth is to bear the fruit of wisdom throughout life. For the one who has walked in foreign lands early will never be caged by the illusion that their own ways are the only ways, or that their own truths are the only truths.

But he also exhorts: live abroad, if you can. For a brief journey is like a glance, but dwelling in a place is like a long gaze. To live among another people is to walk in their rhythm, to feel the pulse of their seasons, to learn not only their customs but the meanings behind them. This is not the shallow seeing of the tourist, but the deeper knowing of the sojourner. And from such knowing comes humility, compassion, and an expanded soul.

There is danger, however, in refusing this path. The one who never travels, who never steps beyond their familiar borders, risks mistaking their narrow life for the whole of reality. History warns us of nations and leaders who fell into arrogance because they could not see beyond their own walls. Yet those who traveled—like the Mongol envoys who learned from Persia and China, or the Renaissance thinkers who drew from Arab and Greek wisdom—became builders of flourishing civilizations. Thus, Freston’s counsel is not only for individuals but for nations: openness sustains life, while isolation breeds decay.

The lesson, then, is this: seek understanding beyond yourself, so that you may come to know yourself more deeply. Do not fear the foreign tongue, the unfamiliar food, the strange custom—embrace them, and let them reshape you. Let humility be your passport, curiosity your companion, and openness your guide. For the road teaches what no lecture can, and the hearths of strangers can reveal the deepest truths of your own home.

And in practice: travel while you are young and free; live abroad if fortune allows; but even if you cannot cross seas, seek out cultures within your own land, listen to voices different from your own, walk roads outside your neighborhood. For the principle remains: the more you understand others, the more fully you will understand yourself. And in this, Freston’s words endure as a torch, lighting the path for those who would live not narrowly, but expansively, as citizens not only of nations, but of the world.