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I Â鶹¾«Æ· S™m in Cape Town, South Africa, as I write this. I Â鶹¾«Æ· S™ve been heading to South Africa about once a year or so for a while now, and before that I spent a fair bit of time in east Africa Â鶹¾«Æ· S“ Kenya, mostly, but also Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania. In September, I was in Nigeria for the first time.

Why do I go to African countries so regularly? I could say that it is related to my academic research, and that would be true, but it wouldn Â鶹¾«Æ· S™t capture the whole story. Some might think that it Â鶹¾«Æ· S™s just a holiday in disguise. That Â鶹¾«Æ· S™s not it either Â鶹¾«Æ· S“ I don Â鶹¾«Æ· S™t usually have the time to do much sightseeing, although I have done some. I Â鶹¾«Æ· S™m not looking for my heritage Â鶹¾«Æ· S“ I Â鶹¾«Æ· S™m a white Canadian/American, and as far as I know I don Â鶹¾«Æ· S™t have any recent heritage in Africa. If we go far enough back, of course, we all come from there, but according to a recent DNA test I Â鶹¾«Æ· S™m pretty solidly northern European.

I Â鶹¾«Æ· S™m also not going to fulfill some moral mandate. I Â鶹¾«Æ· S™m not trying to help anyone, at least no more than someone from South Africa might come here to help us. I don Â鶹¾«Æ· S™t have the answers to their problems, and even more importantly, I have no interest in defining what those problems are. That Â鶹¾«Æ· S™s their business. There is, in fact, nothing noble about me going to South Africa, much less exotic. I have no higher purpose, or more accurately, I have no higher purpose in going than I would in staying in Orlando.

So why go, then? The short answer: to be pushed outside of my comfort zone. The world, my world, is pretty much constructed for my benefit and convenience, as a white straight male. You know it Â鶹¾«Æ· S™s true Â鶹¾«Æ· S“ most people in power look like me and talk like me. If I didn Â鶹¾«Æ· S™t actually make the effort, I could make my way through life dealing with the myriad tasks and challenges I have, but without ever really having to think about myself in the midst of that.

There are those who live outside of their comfort zone pretty much all the time. There are women who are abused, and who can Â鶹¾«Æ· S™t yet find a way out of their situation. Some never do. There are African Americans who live in fear every time they walk out their doors, and every time they look at the news. There are transsexuals who worry about who Â鶹¾«Æ· S™s around the corner, who Â鶹¾«Æ· S™s watching which bathroom they enter, and what it all might mean for their safety. There are those who are in all sorts of threatening situations on a daily basis, at home, at work, just walking around. These people do not need to learn to live outside of their comfort zone Â鶹¾«Æ· S“ they already know it intimately. That doesn Â鶹¾«Æ· S™t mean that those in precarious places can Â鶹¾«Æ· S™t benefit from being outside familiar places as well.

But those of us who aren Â鶹¾«Æ· S™t regularly subject to the systematic and structural forces that make the world a precarious place, we need to take the risk of finding a space where we don Â鶹¾«Æ· S™t already know everything that will happen, where we can Â鶹¾«Æ· S™t predict every action of everyone around us, where we have to think about the effects of our actions on the world around, because they might just be misunderstood.

We carefully construct safe and predictable places for ourselves, as much as we can. Sometimes what seems safe turns out not to be Â鶹¾«Æ· S“ people are abused at home, gay and allied youth are murdered in a club Â鶹¾«Æ· S“ but we at least strive to make our places safe, by making them predictable. There Â鶹¾«Æ· S™s nothing wrong with that, but there Â鶹¾«Æ· S™s also value in unpredictability.

My answer is to travel. That Â鶹¾«Æ· S™s not everyone Â鶹¾«Æ· S™s answer Â鶹¾«Æ· S“ but what Â鶹¾«Æ· S™s yours? Do you have a way of thinking about your own place at arm Â鶹¾«Æ· S™s length, rather than from the inside? Where would you go to step out of your world, and experience another place for a moment? And, what do you think you might learn from that experience?

That Â鶹¾«Æ· S™s why I go to various places in Africa. There are good people there, who have entirely different hopes, fears and histories from mine. When I learn about them, I also learn about myself Â鶹¾«Æ· S“ and in the process, learn what it means to empathize with someone who isn Â鶹¾«Æ· S™t in my world.

What I bring back to the classroom, to my research, and to my relationships is incalculable. Learning to empathize and understand is like using a muscle Â鶹¾«Æ· S“ if you don Â鶹¾«Æ· S™t exercise, you Â鶹¾«Æ· S™ll lose it. So, find a new place Â鶹¾«Æ· S“ you might learn something about your own familiar place in the process.

Bruce Janz is a professor in the UCF Department of Philosophy and co-director of the Center for Humanities and Digital Research. He can be reached at Bruce.Janz@ucf.edu.