Returning Home

While I was in Italy, I'd heard about everything that was going on on the other side of the hemisphere.  Though my trip was time I was taking to physically disconnect, I still wanted to be aware of what was happening in the world. So every couple of days, I'd come home at the end of some hours spent exploring, connect back to wifi, and do a brief catch-up on current events.

Most of what I saw during my time away saddened me, much like the way many events have been affecting me lately, and a skip across the ocean couldn't serve as an escape from it.  Nor did I want it to.  I had traveled to this place to rekindle my love with the world we live in and remember how beautiful it is- and of course to find more beauty that I'd never known of.  That, I did.  But I still wanted to be connected.  I didn't want to turn my cheek from the struggles in Puerto Rico, or the fresh news of the senseless acts of a damaged individual in Las Vegas.

This was home, still my world, even 4,000 miles away. 

The thing is, during previous travels, when I turned on the tv, I'd be able to get by without a big story from home that was international breaking news.  I'd be able to continue on and flip through to watch a local comedy with subtitles.  Now, things just seem inescapable. 

As I stood over the Grand Canal and watched gondolas of lovers glide by, I thought about how the very water this city has thrived on for centuries is the same water that had just abruptly taken shelter from thousands back home.

As I stared up at the statues of Psyche & Cupid, and the Three Graces, I'd thought about how humans fought just to live a free life (freedom of emotions, to create, free to think your own thoughts), and now individuals have taken it upon themselves to destroy that very same freedom which one could've only hoped for in the past- and unfortunately, along with that anyone else who these individuals thought might have been living happier lives than their own. 

We live in a world so self absorbed that we think about ourselves all the time (which was necessary to advance the human race this far) yet so socially connected that we are also injecting ourselves into everyone else's business.  Perhaps the problem lies in how we react and handle the information that we discover- which was once private and not shared.  Especially when we don't like what we learn.  Perhaps it is the realization and increased awareness of the fact that people live so differently from ourselves that others cannot handle.

Ironically enough, these hands sculpted by Lorenzo Quinn were created because of his concern regarding global warming and the city of Venice drowning water...

I've been trying focus on the positive lately, but one must be aware of the goings-on of our home and the world as it evolves.  The struggle is in the balance of staying positive while putting energy towards places where we can help to make some kind of progress in a forward direction.  I don't typically write about all of this on here, and I certainly don't have answers, but the current changes are so intense and relevant at the moment that at the very least, our relationships with them need to be addressed, considered, and acted upon.