When I think of it, I don't know if there's any other quality that shapes me quite the way my love for travel does. In trying to limit my screen time while locked in apartment and...wait for it...not traveling, I've tried some Netflix-free ways to pass the time. One of my favorites is looking through my Dad's old atlas. It's an 18 1/2" by 12 1/2" Atlas of the Worldpublished by the National Geographic Society in 1992. While not the most recent, its large size and volume of contents make it a really fun dream machine. Over the years I've drifted towards using Google Maps to scour the world, but I'm glad I navigated back to the big book.

I get that it's not for everybody, but there's something about leisurely perusing a map. It's restorative. You can scrutinize a specific area and create connections between places, or you can glance at the imagery in its entirety and drink it all in.

Of course, browsing through the atlas makes me want to travel, to explore unique pockets of the globe that were previously unknown to me. The world is such an amazing home. There are cultural differences between households across the street from one another, let alone between a tertiary town, a separate state; a nearby nation, or a contrasting continent. There exists deserts and mountains and oceans and jungles and isthmuses out there, everything you've ever seen in a movie, just waiting to be discovered. In some regions on the map you can imagine polar bears living there, in others it's easy to picture an elephant plodding along with bemusement. It's truly a wondrous place, and using the atlas only evokes a hunger to experience it.

Travel creates life possibilities that are otherwise simply unknowable. Going somewhere new is trying something new, except it's doing completely routine things, like eating and bathing and socializing and sleeping and speaking, in a way you've never before been exposed. This cultivates a respect for one's relationship with everything. It helps impress upon the futility of division. In essence, it makes one a more synergistic human being. Hey, it's a pandemic, I get it. Can't travel right now. Open up an atlas.