Just a Speck

Sitting under the sky I always get that sense of being a speck on the planet. I think of all the millions of people out there and all their noise and stories, the constant movement. Images from all across the world that I've seen on the news splashes across my mind. And I feel small. But to travel is to shrink the world--things no longer seem overwhelming when you see them for yourself, when you feet are walking across the grounds of The Louvre in Paris or the cobbled streets of Antwerp, when you sit on the world's largest park bench designed by Gaudi in Barcelona. Breathe the air of London, the green of Ireland, ride a gondola in Venice or a water taxi with pro-Bin Laden t-shirt wearing fellows in Belize. I was standing in the middle of Times Square a few months ago and all I could think was--this is it? The only place I've traveled where I still felt small was Hawaii. I remember sitting on a beach staring into the ocean--whales breaking on the horizon--and thinking about how small of a speck it was in the ocean, the nearest great land several hours away by plane. It's a stunning place, but it's out there in the middle of what seems like nowhere. Small. I remember reading an essay by the great Annie Dillard about the tsunami in Asia that killed over 100,000 people. She posed this question--would you exchange the life of your child to save all those thousands? And this--she told her young daughter how unfathomable it was to think of that great loss of life and her daughter answered that it's easy--so many dots on the water.