The Gap

There is a sense of unworthiness that I feel traveling these days. It hits me when the border control employee asks me about my stay and welcomes me into their country with a smile. It’s in the shuttle drivers who get me to my location safely, and the locals who treat me with kindness, offering advice and recommendations to a solo traveler without looking for anything in return.

All of this for me, while Western countries are meeting people with hostility, detention, and the kind of coldness that strips away their humanity.

I feel the weight of being a woman born into privilege, traveling to these countries and still being met with welcoming smiles. I know people personally who have "border-hopped" to stay in countries for months, even years. We call that "adventure," but for those who want a better life and who pay their taxes, it’s a crime. Why is it somehow different for us?

I don’t know how people who see what is happening can travel in good conscience without this tension. I struggle. I don’t condone the way things are, yet here I am, moving through a world that is open to me and closed to so many others.

I don’t have the answers. I know the world is complicated, and I know these systems are a tangled mess. But the gap between the kindness I am shown and the way we treat other human beings does not go unnoticed.

Kindness & Compassion always, MJ