Our small, yet unfathomably large world

Our world is unfathomably large.  When I awake in the morning, reading the latest news on my iPad, I hear about pollution in Beijing to the extent where people can barely be outside safely without a mask, I read about the terrors of the war in the middle east, I read about the Trump administration and the laws they create, hoping to influence Congress one way or another, thinking how inconsiderate and discriminatory some laws are, yet judging them not

fully beholding its effect on my own community.  I have noticed myself judging, perceiving and soaking in everything that happens in the world with a sense of detachment, as if this would never happen to me.  Yet I always know, in the back of my head, that I am as susceptible to becoming threatened in a war as anyone else.  Climate change, war, new laws etc. just haven’t managed to reach me at a personal level yet.  And this is how I’m observing the vastness of this world, and noticing how often I just hear something with that sense of detachment, thinking about how distant that world news is. But the reality is it’s not that far.  

Simultaneously, this world sometimes feels small.  There are at least three kids who attend my school [private, so not everyone is from the same town], who live on the same street [they’re in different grades].  Two of them are neighbors.  What again makes this world feel so large, is that they don’t even know they are.  

Two weeks ago, I was walking home, when I saw a kid from Belmont Day School that I hadn’t seen for about 4 years.  Somehow, we still recognized each other.  That afternoon, I was walking home from school, and he, after getting off at his stop on the public bus, passed me on the street.  And then there are other incidents where my friends both traveled to another country over break and seen each other at that foreign location.  

I believe coincidence, chance, luck, and fate, partially control whom we see.  Sometimes we go to school with our neighbors and don’t even know it.  Other times, we see people we haven’t seen in years in a foreign country.  It all quite amazes me.