It's time to be at peace

It's time for as many people as possible to exchange houses, travel to a new community, escape the comfort zone, walk in someone else's shoes, and learn to be at peace. My wife and I have house exchanged in Colorado, France, Connecticut, South Carolina, Maine, Florida, and Arizona, to name a few. We have never been disappointed and we've made many friends world wide. A little history. Robert Ripley was a traveler. And he made traveling fascinating in the 1930s with his articles of exotica syndicated in the Hearst Newspapers nationally that became known as Ripley’s “Believe It or Not”. Turns out, he loved China. But during World War II he was prohibited from going there because the Chinese were enemies. But after World War II he went back to China and was so disappointed in the change from sophisticated culture to socialist regime that he had a heart attack and died (once he returned to New York). He is one of the heroes of the concept that the world is at your fingertips. Of course, his life begs the question "will the world become too homogenous before it's time?" Remember the famous Apple ad of 1984. Such an inevitability would break our hearts, as it did Robert Ripley's visavis China. So let's look, right now, at our opportunity. Never better, in fact. Just do it. Look at the history of travel, after Ripley. There was Disney travel in the 1950s, which was epitomized by the Disneyland ride with the accompaniment "It's a small world after all." You could fake travel. You don't have to actually go anywhere. All the cultures of the world come to you. But the cultures are in phoney, childish drag. Then there was Arthur Frommer’s “Europe on a dollar a day" for the 1960s. That book and others, as well as many companies, made travel inexpensive and adventurous through the 1980s, for the Boomers. Fodor’s, for instance. By the 1990s, America's labor and economy were so strong travel to exotic places became a lot easier, due to the increasing number of tour companies and travel writers and travel photographers. And the world seemed safe until it all collapsed with the tech bubble that devastated America’s economy and isolated Americans again. Followed by the merciless killing of thousands in the World Trade Centers in New York on Nov. 11, 2001. Today, internet rising puts the Wi-FI alliance goal in sight: “Connecting everyone and everything, everywhere.” Travel is for all ages.