When I was a little boy, I saw the world as a big place. Bigger than I could imagine. And I never thought I’d see it all, or as much of it as I did see. I thought I would spend my days reading about them, imagining them, but otherwise staying in my small town and growing a life there.
But for some reason, it was not a shock when I ended up traveling everywhere. You would think that going from just dreaming about the world to being a big part of it would cause some kind of upset in your psyche, but somehow it felt very natural and easy on me. I liked it. I liked knowing there was a world very different to what I had grown up with, and that I could go see what that was like.
I didn’t get to see as much as I wanted to, because even though I was traveling, I wasn’t seeing much of the world itself. But knowing it was out of there, and that I was somehow influencing it, made me feel like I was getting a lot more out of the world than I thought I ever would.
One of the things I like to do now is explore those parts that I didn’t get to see when I was there. Now I can go unnoticed and just see it all and take it in. There are other things I can see better now, too. Like how when I was there, I wasn’t seeing everything very clearly. Not my family, not my success, not myself. There is a danger in being too much inside yourself: you let no outside view in, and you can deteriorate. You see, we are supposed to connect to each other and the rest of the world. It makes us alive, as much as the air in our chests, and the beats in our hearts, and we can’t forget that.
You don’t have to be me, or in my position, to lose sight of yourself or the world. Make the time to be engaged with the world. Don’t find yourself having to explore it all later.
