It’s a Wide World

***Note to interested parties: John is still alive. I guess he just doesn’t like writing on the blog as much as I do. Who knew when I was a little girl too shy to talk to the librarian that I would one day be “the talker” in my relationship? Go figure.***

Anyway, this week John and I are picking our next R&R destination and I have to say it is a tad overwhelming. Although getting back to North or South America is prohibitively expensive, tickets to many other amazing places are temptingly cheap. We could see the ancient rock-face churches in Ethiopia, hike through hills of rice paddies in Southern China, take the overnight train from Nairobi to Mombasa, or hop up to Italy for a few weeks of intensive gelato-ing.

All of these choices made me think of this NPR story I read last month about how hard it is to be “well-read” these days, given all the books, magazines, movies, music, and television we have access to. The article is called, “The Sad, Beautiful Fact that We’re Going to Miss Almost Everything,” and in it the author writes,

“Surrender… is the realization that you do not have time for everything that would be worth the time you invested in it if you had the time, and that this fact doesn't have to threaten your sense that you are well-read… If ‘well-read’ means ‘not missing anything,’ then nobody has a chance. If ‘well-read’ means ‘making a genuine effort to explore thoughtfully,’ then yes, we can all be well-read. But what we've seen is always going to be a very small cup dipped out of a very big ocean…”

I think the same feeling applies to being “well-traveled.” This world is a huge, fascinating place. There are so many incredible places to visit that I will never, ever in my whole life see all of them. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. Isn’t it amazing to think that even when John and I are 92 (ahem, John will be older, naturally), there will still be new places for us to explore? Even at the end of our lives we will only have seen a very small cup dipped out of all that God has created? Wow.

So with that, we’re picking just one incredible place out of many: Greece. It’s been on my to-travel-to-someday list forever and I can’t believe we will be there in just a month! There’s nothing like looking at pictures of Greece to make the thought of all the other places you couldn’t go to seem not very important…

-Stephanie

Photo courtesy of Frommer's