"Sweet dreams are made of this
Who am I to disagree?
I travel the world
And the seven seas
Everybody's looking for something..."

- The Eurythmics

This summer I spent two months away from my home. In those two months I learned more about people, places, and life than I had in years. Traveling broadened my horizons and opened me up to a whole new world of possibilities. Education is typically thought of as what we learn in school— I now know that there is a whole other level of education out there that no school can teach you.

In school you may learn a foreign language. You may learn culture, customs, and so forth, but you don't learn people. You can't learn people— not like that. To learn about people— their thoughts, their beliefs, their feelings— you must genuinely engage them in meaningful conversation. A textbook cannot mimic the authenticity of a face-to-face encounter.

For example, I met a young woman during my travels in England who bought a cab ride for my mother and I, and herself. After hearing us explain to a couple passengers on the train where we were headed, she engaged us in conversation and suggested we ride with her, as she was headed in the same direction. We ended up having the time of our lives with this young lady, taking a stroll through Kingston and sharing jokes throughout our cab ride. She shared with us some background information: where she had come from before moving closer to London, where she had visited in the United States, what national monuments she sees daily on her commute to work, etc. She also shared with us her thoughts on Brexit as a citizen of Great Britain, and explained to us her millennial perspective on the situation. It was a perspective I never could've gained by simply watching the news or reading a history book— it was a genuine political opinion on something culturally relevant to this young woman.

Throughout my travels I came to the conclusion that, though we are all from different places and we speak different languages, we are all universally connected by an invisible thread; simply put, it is our collective humanity. In Barcelona's city center I was watching pigeons peck around for food, when I noticed a group of little girls feeding the birds from their hands. I wished to join them, but my Spanish is quite shaky, and they didn't speak any English. Through a few gestures and very, very few words I communicated to the girls my interest in also feeding the pigeons. One of the young girls, maybe ten years of age, smiled and placed some rice into my hand. She gestured for me to toss the rice toward the pigeons, and we watched them flock around us. One particularly brave pigeon ate from my hand, and I filled up with excitement. "Look!" I yelled to my mother who was standing nearby, and the little girls smiled and continued to give me some bits of their rice. We did this for maybe half an hour, laughing at and admiring the pigeons as they pecked about and flew around our ankles. Though we did not speak each other's respective languages, we shared this fun experience through our genuinely human expressions and reactions. It is a moment I will never forget, and it reminded me that we are all citizens of the collective world, not just our own little corner of it.

You can study. You can read. You can work out equations, memorize formulas, and repeat algorithms until the cows come home... But you can't learn people unless you get out there and engage them. That, my friends, is what "education" is to me.