How visiting every country in the world changes one

[Stranger]

Hello friends,

I saw this post on reddit and thought it was a really nice illustration of the disparity between the news and reality.  The author visited every country in the world on a shoestring budget of $150 US per week, which meant he interacted with the real ordinary people of each country rather than being secreted away in tourist hotels.  Here's what he said:

How did this trip change you as a person?

It made me realise a bunch of stuff: mostly that you can't judge a people by the actions of their government. Also that the vast majority of the people on this planet are good people who just want to be helpful and just want to be liked. Of course the odd dickhead you meet will stick in your head, but they are (mercifully) few and far between.
Finally it made me a lot more positive about the planet, humanity, and our shared future. If all we know of the world comes from news reports of massacres and atrocities it's easy to think that the world is going to hell in a hard cart, but the truth is that the media by its very nature tends to over-report the bad and under-report the good. Going to these places made the world seem a lot more real, a lot more connected and made the challenges that we face seem less insurmountable.
We've still got a long way to go, and we'll stumble along the way, but we're getting there.

https://www.reddit.com/r/tabled/comments...ly_person/