Do you ever wonder what random people in other parts of the world are doing? Or how you can personally be connected to people in other countries? What parallels might run through people living completely separate lives in completely different places? Since I love traveling and have been to most of the countries in Europe, I sometimes think about what people might be doing at any given moment in Rome or Paris, or Singapore, a place I have not been to. This thought occurred to me this morning as I was waiting at a stop light and there was a man on a moped in the lane next to me. In northern Indiana, this seemed very out of place because one in a million people drive a moped here. But as I grew up in Italy, I was used to seeing people on mopeds constantly since it is such a common, natural way to get around there. So when I saw this man on the moped this morning, I thought about Italians that were riding their mopeds in Rome at that very moment, a world away. It is interesting how something like that can remind you of something that occurs in a different part of the world, and while you are not personally experiencing it in that other part of the world, by seeing it where you are, you are connected to others that might be doing it somewhere else in the world.

Sometimes I think – How can I be connected to every single person in the world? We can, quite easily actually, because we are all joint by human nature. But we are also connected on a more personal level in that we share similar experiences of thought, emotion, hope, despair, etc. even though we may be worlds apart and lead very different lives. This is one of the things that makes life beautiful – to think about people in other parts of the world and feel connected to them. I only wonder if they share the same feeling…