When growing up, my world was big

My village with one thousand inhabitants was my world

Once a month we went to the next town
It was huge
My world was huge

New school, new worlds opened
People from other continents 

But actually imagining these, seemed impossible
My world became smaller, but my imagination could not create a larger world

Now I’m sitting here

In a plane
Heading to Dubai
And I think, for the first time in my life, I realize, the world is huge

I realize that you can just get on a plane and actually see all the things you’ve heard of

I’ve seen cities we crossed tonight I could not imagine as being actually real

All these things only exist on the screen
That people from my small village can actually go there? 

Unimaginable 

Now I’m sitting here
And my world is tiny

But the world is huge

Exactly one year ago, I wrote this poem on a plane to India, where I was attending a school exchange for two weeks. It was the first time for my 17- year old self that I went on a plane, and travelled to a place so far away from everything I knew and had seen in my life before. 

The way I felt in this moment is something I experience a lot while traveling and that other people can probably connect to as well. 

A study in the US asked how many people one American knows by name, resulting in an average of 611 people per person. What sounds like a huge number of people, is in reality just a small drop in the vast ocean of human existence. Since most people don’t wake up in a new country or place every day, most of these people probably live in the area around one’s home, and will probably share at least some common ground on cultural standards and moral beliefs. 

Envisioning these numbers in one’s head might help to get a small imagination of the unimaginable vastness of places, people and different cultures of our earth. Of course, I had always somehow known this fact to be true. I had seen pictures and videos of places so far away from my own world and surroundings, read books describing adventures and experiences that were so different to what I had ever seen. So, in some way, I knew that all these places must exist somewhere on the same planet as I live on. But, if I am totally honest, I still could not really believe this fact. 

When I entered the plane to Dubai, I had no real idea of what would be awaiting me on the other side of this journey. I certainly did not expect for the simple flight on the plane to shake my imagination of the world in such a drastic way. But, as I was sitting in my seat, listening to music and looking at the map shown on the display in front of me, this was exactly the case. 

After crossing many cities of Germany and the countries nearby, to many of whom I had at least travelled for a day or two before, we entered completely unknown land for me. Alexandria turned up on the map, a city I had read so many stories about, chasing novel characters experiencing incredible adventures in the dreamy world of its library. Even though I had read all these stories, I never thought I would get to at least fly over this place one day. 

As soon as we stepped out of the airport in India, this feeling became a hundred times more intense. It felt as if we had accidentally stumbled into a documentary of life on a planet far away from our earth, and I guess in some ways, this is even true. Even though we all got a little used to the new surroundings over the next two weeks, this feeling of surreality still stayed with me for our whole visit in India, and even for the first days back home, that seemed so far away from everything I had seen in the two weeks before. 

When I arrived in Macedonia last week, this feeling came back again. Even though it was not as strong as I had experienced it in India, everything was so new and unknown to me. I knew that I was still in Europe, the continent I grew up in and lived all my life, but this was a very different Europe than the one I had known before. Still, I was able to recognize many things that were similar as they are at home.

To me, traveling is exactly about this feeling. Even though it can be confusing, scary and overwhelming sometimes, it is, at least to me, one of the best experiences one can have in their life. To realize, that the own tiny bubble you usually live in, is not all there is on this planet, is an incredible privilege. Whenever everything seems to be too much, too strict, too judgy, zooming out and realizing that there are so many other places, values and societies on this earth, really helps me to cope. 

I guess that is what I try to do when everything gets too much: just think of a place you have seen or want to see, even if it is only twenty minutes away. Because people will already be thinking a little differently there, see the world in a slightly different way. 

Even though our own worlds appear to be huge sometimes, they are tiny. And the world is huge.

Lea Schwegmann

Sources: 
https://ourworldindata.org/limits-personal-experience
Images created by Canva AI
https://www.princeton.edu/~mjs3/mccormick_salganik_zheng10.pdf