Synchronicity
What does it mean when you discover you are wearing (entirely unintentionally) a pirate shirt, on Talk Like a Pirate Day? Perhaps merely that you happen to have a lot of pirate shirts…
As much as we loved our vacation, I’ve been loving home just as much. It’s magically become fall here in Maine, with nippy air and morning fogs over the river, and trees beginning to glimmer gold. There are pumpkins and asters and locally-grown apples at the grocery store. And I am filled with the strong conviction I ought to be baking something.
It’s funny what travel does to one’s mind. Or at least, to my mind. Especially this particular trip, which was longer than any of my previous vacations. Or perhaps it wasn’t the duration, but the enormity of London that did it. In London I felt very small. There were so many people, so many buses, so many tourists. Everywhere there were museums and restaurants and people rushing too and fro. And giant churches and enormous Ferris wheels and great glass towers. It was all so BIG.
I spent about a day feeling uncomfortably overwhelmed by this, especially in the context of storytelling. Look at all these thousands and thousands of people, my brain would whisper, every one of them has their own story. And yours is just a tiny brushstroke in this huge canvas. Does it really matter?
It’s a vulnerable, exposed feeling. Like standing out in an empty field on a dark night, with no other lights, when the whole Milky Way is just THERE RIGHT ABOVE YOU.
Or like today’s xkcd. [Do actually click and drag the last panel, as the title suggests! Though be warned, it can quickly become addictive...]
But you can take an odd sort of comfort from it too, if you can see how you are a part of it, part of that vastness and greatness. Being in London pushed me to find that comfort in discomfort. Which is, I think, a good and useful thing.
It also made me appreciate my friends and family (and dog!), the people who make my small corner of the huge universe a home, who connect me to the greater world.
And now I am getting way too philosophical! I will stop blathering and instead share this adorable and inspiring video of Emma, who has a medical condition that prevents her from using her arms, and her 3D printed plastic exo-skeleton. Go science! Go awesome and determined little girls!
Click to viewNow I am off to go find something to bake…!