POP!

You know, I was once in a train (as people tend to be) in Guanzhou (which is very far away from where I am now) sandwiched in a flood of strange unknown people in a strange and unknown place,  like a timid little needle in a living, breathing, behemoth of a haystack. I was lucky though. I was not lost (this time that is) and I was not alone - I was with an unlikely bunch of people together on an unusual mission to a hidden little place (that I've never found again on Google maps). It was an interesting day, to be sure, fraught with unlikely encounters and dangers, from rabid puppies to probably-illegal activity in a totalitarian state.

None of this is important for you, though, let's go back to the train.

Munched up by the tides of indifferent people, pressing against me like so many gnarly teeth, a Texan priest (of all people) I was travelling with turned to me with a bounteous smile and said something that I have not yet forgotten. It went something like:

"You know I love to just look at all these people and think about all of those different bubbles, all the different stories, all these people in their own little worlds, thinking about their own little problems, living their own little stories. Just going on, oblivious to all the other little bubbles around them."

I stepped out and looked at all the little people and almost laughed.
All the little bubbles ready to go 'Pop!'

You know, as I trudge through my life of essays and classes, homework and schoolwork, looping like a little wheel, I realise that I really am no different. I plod along with my head down in the mud stressing about all the silly little things that I have to do, not really knowing where I'm going really.

But every now and then I look up.
And every now and then I think (to take a curiously common example) "wow that's a big tree!"

I love the fact though that everyday I get to walk over the freeway on my way home and, when I'm paying attention, look out over all the speedy little cars and trucks and neat houses and trees to the big blue sky stretching its mantle over all and everything. So big! So big it stretches my brain more than any day of school. So big it makes me laugh.

Hahahaha (Pop!)

How good it is to look up at the sky and see how little we are.
How little people look, up and out of their world.
And suddenly, in knowing our littleness our world grows so much bigger.

How funny are clouds! How mighty is the wind! How beautiful the stars, like wounds in a bleak and black and lonely eternity for Heaven to shine right on through.
How big, how beautiful is the world. How much more interesting than the stupid little private universe inside my head.

What a relief it is to know that it's not all about me!

So look up at the sky and realise how little you are. Let your bubble pop!
And let the relief flood in ...
that you are not the centre of the universe.
That it's not about you. It never was about you.
How Good!