Recently another Australian friend came through our area, and I can't tell you how much good it did my soul just to feed off of her youthful enthusiasm. It was her first time abroad, and she took me back to my first time traveling. I went to Italy. I was convinced the plane was going to crash because that was far more imaginable than the thought of me--ME traipsing around the Colosseum for heaven's sake!
My favorite thing about traveling is how small it makes me feel. The feeling that you're just a blip in history and a speck on this globe even in your own time...it's such a healthy smack upside the head to my worrywart, self-absorbed nature. But then there's also the novelty--somebody else's everyday seems so magical. Laundry hanging off clotheslines in an alley that echoes with the sounds of Italian daytime television.
Occasionally when I lived in San Francisco I'd nearly run over a tourist as I rushed off the bus to work, and my feeling of exasperation would wash away when I'd see their upturned faces, that feeling of smallness clearly written on them. And I would look up and around and remember.
But San Jose...San Jose is not exotic. Still, as I drove my young friend around and she exclaimed over the postman, and the street signs, and the American houses, the scales fell from my eyes for a moment and I saw the beauty of my everyday.
Sometimes I just need to remind myself to look up and feel small.
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