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Open Letter to Everyone

The world is changing. As we speak, or as you read this, it is running, hurtling, forward into tomorrow. It will never again be what it is right now. You cannot wait to explore it, or you will be exploring a different world. Just as we can never explore the new world as Columbus first discovered it, though we can surely sail from Spain to Brazil, no one else will experience the world as I did on my voyage around it. The world will not be the same tomorrow, it may be better, or it may be worse, but whatever it is, it will be different.

If you think you might want to go see the world one day, but don't have time right now, or can't be bothered, you can't wait. If you put it off, the world will change, and the one you finally go and see will not be the same world you could have visited today.

The world is changing. You don't have to travel around it to see this. You can see this from right in your own home. All you have to do is stop for a minute and look at it. Watch it. See how it is, and how it used to be, and how it's changing.

On this trip I had numerous experiences that opened my eyes to this. After seeing the same companies selling the same products in almost every country around the world, you realize the world is drawing together. The faraway places aren't as far as they used to be. As more and more people, groups, cultures, try to be like everybody else, or like anyone else, cultural diversity is losing out. McDonald's is ever increasingly the place to go for a quick bite, whether you're in the states, Europe, India, or Vietnam.

I'm not saying change is bad, nor am I saying it's not. Just be aware of he changes going on in the world around you. Be aware that the world is changing, and hopefully you can help to guide it in a good direction.

It may be that just like people today long for the untouched and unspoiled wildernesses of decades ago, someday, sooner that we all think, they, we more than likely, will long or the untouched and unspoiled cultures that once inhabited every corner of the globe.

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