An ocean is a terrifyingly large thing to comprehend. To knowingly be on the opposite side of one from everything I’ve ever known is a larger thing still; so large that my mind fails completely to register even a fraction of the distance.
Internet and, to a lesser degree, phones only compound this problem. To look someone in the face and have a conversation, knowing that they are an ocean and more away is above my level of comprehension. To see pictures of home, friends, and family hours after they were taken, to be told how someone’s day was over the space of mere minutes and thousands of miles, it makes the world deceptively small. This only serves to increase the shock of realizing just how incredibly and unfathomably large the whole thing is.
Even just looking at something as simple as a map renders all logic mute. Maps are a gross misrepresentation of the world.We ought not to see and understand America and the UK and Asia all in one glance. It’s too bite-sized and does not allow the proper consideration that every country, every city, every town and every person deserves; mountains, oceans, rivers, valleys, highlands and lowlands, deserts, marshes, the entirety of humanity and all its creations all jam packed onto a little sheet of paper.
Here is everything there is to see, now make it real and make it yours.
