I’ve never understood the obsession with travel. I live in a cozy home in lovely town with wonderful neighbors. Why would I want to give that up—even for a few days—to get on a crowded plane to go to an unfamiliar area and to sleep in a bed that is not my own? What is to be gained from such wanderings?

To each his own, as they say. Yet I’ve always been suspicious of those who love to leave home. Why so restless? Blaise Pascal said that all of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone. Personally, I’m quite content to sit quietly alone in a room—so long as the room is in my own home. My credo is, as Ralph Waldo Emerson claimed, “The soul is no traveller; the wise man stays at home.”

If you, too, share my commitment to homebodieness, you’ll appreciate Warren Cole Smith’s recent article, “The Curse of Cain: Travel Isn’t Everything We Make It Out to Be.” Cole notes, “‘Travel is good’ or ‘travel is bad’ aren’t conclusions to which logic or experience or Scripture lead us.” Instead, as Cole observes, “it seems prudent to have a healthy skepticism about the individual and cultural costs of travel. At a minimum, if we do travel, we should travel with our eyes open, not as tourists but as pilgrims, collecting wisdom and not trinkets and souvenirs.”

Read the whole thing wherever you are, whether on a plane, on the road, or (best of all) from the comfort of your own home.