It's a BIG world after all
- Adam
- Oct 24, 2017
- 4 min read
Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash
When I was 16, I had the opportunity to go to Cambodia on an immersion experience with my school. I was part of a small group selected to represent our school. Before that experience, I had only been overseas three times: twice as a young child to the Philippines to visit my extended family, and once to New Zealand also on a cultural immersion. But Cambodia was the first time I would be venturing into a country without my mother or brother and not as a child.
I still vividly remember landing in Phnom Penh. The sun was low in the sky, a beautiful red/purple glow in the sky; contrasted by the ghetto of cardboard shacks that lined the runway. The poverty of the place was unavoidable. Yet, the "no-worries" attitude was plastered across so many Cambodian faces in their trademark ear to ear smiles.
The majority of the immersion was spent at a sister-school, which took in disabled and homeless children. I remember helping teach a computer class, where the students were using a basic typing program. The Marist Brother running the class told me off because I wasn't correcting a student's mistakes, "If you don't teach him, he won't learn."
The second half of the immersion was spent in the northern part of the country in Siem Reap. I remember standing at the top of Angkor Wat, the giant ancient temple, looking out across the Cambodian countryside. I also remember standing at the bottom of a memorial at the Killing Fields, the site where many Cambodians silently lost their lives.
This big world
Yesterday, Stephen Hawking released for the first time his PhD. He said, "...I hope to inspire people around the world to look up at the stars and not down at their feet..." These words are specific to his research topic - on the implications and consequences of the expansion of the universe. Yet, as I read them I was struck by how big our world is: Hawking's imagery, of looking to the stars rather than our own feet, spoke to me of seeing the broader horizons that surround the place where we stand.
Do you remember that scene in The Lion King where Zazu is forced to sing by Scar? One of the numbers he performs is "It's a small world after all". Well, Zazu was wrong! Put it this way, the area of the planet itself is approximately 510 million square km. Brisbane (where I am writing this from) is 15,826 square km. This city, in which I've spent most of my life, is just 0.003% of the world's total surface area. This is a BIG planet we're on.
That planet is comprised of 7.6 billion people, living in 195 countries, who speak 6909 different languages, and who could subscribe to any of the 4200 religious belief systems. Basically, our world is filled with culture. There are so many ideas that exist outside of our habitual bounds. And yet, my life takes place in such a small part of that world. On a daily basis, I would only interact with a small portion of the nearly 2 million people who live in Brisbane, with whom I only speak one language (English).
This is what makes travelling such a special experience. To literally jump into another world, another culture, to learn languages and customs - it literally expands the boundaries of the mind.
The world's wisdom
Certainly, that was the experience for me going to Cambodia as a 16-year-old on a school immersion experience. I wouldn't say that "I found myself", but it was and still is a defining moment in my life. In Cambodia, I learned of different language, culture, customs and religion. I also learned of the tensions and contrasts so often present in human existence; the holding together of two opposite extremes.
Jade too would speak of her time in new places as being learning experiences. I think we had been dating just short of one year when she went to India for a month through a university program. There she conducted research with a small team at a shelter for disabled students (from memory). I remember her being distinctly different when she returned - and not just because she wanted to eat with her hands all the time!
Now, as we travel we do so with the intent to learn. In every place we venture to we make an effort to learn the language, to try the (authentic) local food, to learn from others. This is what makes living overseas for 14 months so exciting (at least for me): learning how to live differently in each of those places.
The world is a big place. Yet we as humans have evolved to inhabit such a small corner of it. The excitement of travel isn't just about seeing new things, it's also about seeing new ways of doing things. It's paradoxical, that as you lose yourself in a place, you, in fact, find new ways to be.
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