#59 The Others Are Us

I grew up in a small town, a farming community. And while I lived there, that little place to me was the center of the universe. I thought that’s the way things were, and all examples of everything could be found within the confines of the small town that I grew up in. Travelling was something we didn’t do very often. And when we did, what today is considered a short excursion, at that time was a major event. But since we did it so infrequently, the impact of wherever we went never really moved me all that much, and it was almost as if it went in and out of my consciousness very quickly as I returned to the center of the world, which was where I lived. In my consciousness there was really no place for anywhere else at that time. And there was an inability to even recognize or need to recognize the existance of other places.

As time went on, I began to see more and more places. And then, I began to travel frequently. And now I do travel frequently to far flung places around the world hours from here – ten, twelve hours from here by airplane. And when I arrive there, there’s a perfectly orderly civilization going on, speaking an entirely different language than we speak, having an entirely different set of ideas about things than we have here. And to these people in this other place, all of it makes particular sense. And the centrality of the focus that goes on back home for me sort of disappears and its relevance sort of becomes questionable.