How Big Is The World?

For over twenty years, I had a brilliant friend named Gary who liked to say (especially in response to my whining about some inscrutable drama): "It's a big world...."  And then he'd smile that wise Buddha smile of his, leaving me to ponder what that had to do with anything.

Apparently, he said that to his family and friends a lot--because it was mentioned in his eulogy with nods all around. Sometimes, the simplest words stay with us, reverberating with new meanings as we try to build bridges with people we think are oddballs:  It's a big world; there's room for all kinds of people.  It's a big world, don't waste your energy puzzling over little things you can't change.  It's a vast planet we live on for an infinite amount of time; make the best of it.

I think of those words as I'm watching Olympic athletes march onto the field proudly carrying flags of their countries. I think of those words when I'm obsessing over something that--from the perspective of outer space, for example--is smaller than a gnat. 

I was watching Island at War last week--an interesting series about a German invasion of a fictional British Channel Island.  What struck me were the ways that some of the English inhabitants and some of the German soldiers befriended each other and came to understand each other as individuals.  One German airman confided in an English woman that he didn't believe in the war either, that he was conscripted and "following orders"--just as the young men on the other side were doing.  

If we paint a people with a broad stroke, we don't see them as individuals; we see them as extensions of the powers that be.  When we studied history in school, countries and their people were painted with broad strokes.  I often believed the propaganda that some countries were "good guys" and other countries were "bad guys."  If the only history one learns is the dates of wars or the names of leaders and dictators, it's easy to conclude that national identities matter more than individual stories.

I hate to admit it, but the "history" and "geography" I learned in school was about as flat as a video game.  I wish we had had more teachers (like the one good history teacher I had at S.A.C) who taught with newspaper clippings and photographs of individuals, each with a unique story. I wish that we'd danced to the music of other cultures, tasted their bread, read the letters lovers sent to each other during times of war and times of peace.