Don't take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
Wole SoyinkaRead
I like to say, 'I spend one-third of my time in Nigeria, one-third in Europe or America, and one-third on a plane.'
Interpretation
This quote reflects the balance of experiences across different cultures and the transitory nature of travel.
Wole Soyinka's quote illustrates the notion of global citizenship, emphasizing how his time is equally divided among Nigeria, Europe, or America, and in transit. This balance highlights the importance of cultural exchange and the impact of diverse experiences on one's perspective, encapsulating a modern lifestyle where physical boundaries become less defined.
In practice
Using this quote during a discussion about cultural experiences in a classroom setting.
Don't take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
Trading and religion have always been aligned together in the history of the world, and especially on the African continent.
A war, with its attendant human suffering, must, when that evil is unavoidable, be made to fragment more than buildings: It must shatter the foundations of thought and re-create. Only in this way does every individual share in the cataclysm and understand the purpose of sacrifice.
Rwanda, which is one of the younger independent states in Africa, must be regarded as a model of how great human trauma can be transformed to commence true reconstruction of people. Human trauma can lead to stunted growth and mass withdrawal.
I have a kind of magnetic attraction to situations of violence.
Art is solace; art is vision, and when I pick up a literary work, I am a consumer of literature for its own sake.
It's a very immersive and intense form of travel to walk around with an interpreter and stop random people on the street and ask them about their lives.
When you're travelling, you are what you are right there and then. People don't have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.
I've been lucky to travel and work all over the world through the lens of the back of the house, and I love that monocle. I love that lens, because it's real people.
My Christmas present to myself each year is to see how much air travel can open up the world and take me to places as far from sheltered California and Japan as possible.
That is the magic of travel. You leave your home secure in your own knowledge and identity. But as you travel, the world in all it's richness intervenes. You meet people you could not invent; you see scenes you could not imagine. Your own world, which was so large as to consume your whole life, becomes smaller and smaller until it is only one tiny dot in time and space. You return a different person.
So travel for me is an act of discovery and of responsibility as well a grand adventure and a constant liberation.
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