A Sentimental Science Lesson on the Size of Earth

They say the world is small. Yes, I’ve said it myself. And indeed there is truth to it. When I meet someone in Belgium who went to school with the parents of children I babysat in Jordan for years. Or when, in Zambia, I live with a girl who knows a guy I met while skiing in Lebanon. When so-and-so knows so-and-so and when I run into people in unexpected places. Small world, I say and laugh.
But actually, I find the world excruciatingly large, because the hearts that I love and the pieces of my own that I leave with them are so far and expensive away.
Some rock-solid facts:
1.       If you wanted to walk on a straight line, the equator for example, around the entire earth, you would have to a) be very fit and b) walk 40,075 kilometers.
2.       This means that the farthest away you could ever be from someone is 20,037.5 km. Unless, of course, you travel through the earth; then it would be 12,742, give or take your elevation.

Not very comforting. 20,037.5 is a long way. Granted, there aren’t very many people on the exact opposite side of the world to me. And if there are, they are probably swimming and I probably don’t know them anyway. So why mention these facts? The point is that even 10,000 kilometers is enough.  500 is enough to be too far away. The point is the earth is really big, regardless of how small it is.

But when I think that the sun, the light of which feels so warm and friendly on my skin, is a terribly vast distance of 149.6 MILLION kilometers away, I wince at my 164 cm smallness. And then look up and down at myself and… relax. It is good to be small. I don’t think I could handle being much bigger. A few centimeters wouldn’t hurt, but you know what I mean.

                Although I am small, in me lives a large love.

                A large love for people and places Here and There.

                You could probably say the same.

And sometimes it’s difficult to know what to do with it all, when you can’t transfer it in a long, unabashed embrace or a sweet silence due to that pesky thing we call distance.

But maybe love’s elastic (I think it is.) And maybe we were born to test its reach. (I think we were.)*

So please know that, when I leave you, or you leave me, I am stretching an invisible, but real, elastic of love over the distance between us. You could, too. We’ll spin an enormous web of connection. If we can feel the warmth of the sun from 149.6 million kilometers away, surely we can feel one another’s from less than 20,037.5.

And when I miss you, I’ll pluck at the string that binds us. Do you feel the vibration? You can pluck it, too. And the sound we make will be a musical hum that fills the planet, enters our hearts, and comforts us with the deep, unbreakable reality of love.

Maybe then the distance won’t seem so bad.

Maybe then the earth will be small again. 



5/9/2017
*Sleeping at Last, again. What can I say? I guess I'm a bit of a fan. 

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