This sculpture, by Bruno Catalano, stands in the Flower Dome, which is part of the Gardens by the Bay complex in Singapore.

(You can see more along these lines, plus a perceptive bit of commentary by Anne Maitre, here.)

Of course, the central idea resonated greatly with us. As a traveller, you leave a little of yourself in every place. It's true.

As Maitre puts it, the traveller is no longer a person from a particular world, but a person out there in the big wide world, "still imprinted with his or her culture but made fragile in the face of immensity".

The quest of the sculpted traveller will not leave him "undamaged": "Fragmented, destabilized, deprived of his landmarks, he walks both to his salvation and to his ruin. Everything will have to be reinvented from now on. The traveller escapes from himself, to look for lands to him unknown."

I've left a lot of myself in the different places I've lived. I've left a little of myself in the places I've only visited.

But because my travels have been voluntary, I've gained substance in every place I've lived or visited, too. Travelling -- if you want to do it -- doesn't whittle you away to nothing, but adds and subtracts so that you are constantly reinvented.

But what of the millions who have no choice but to hit the road? How big are the holes that they live with? How long before unknown lands start to stitch up the wounds? How many are indeed pared away to nothing before that healing can happen?

This is undoubtedly the greatest tragedy of our time.