Thursday, February 11, 2010

Passports for the unborn

In about 4 months a baby just new to the this world will be finding the need for a passport into another world. She'll be brand new to living and breathing but at less than 3 months old she'll experience something that most the people of our country and for that matter our world will never know, international travel. Some people go their whole lives without the need of a passport. For one reason or another they don't leave, many say they want to, they watch their friends come and go wishing that it was them. I've heard many excuses, finances, children, time. One thing is for certain that of all the people I know that do go these excuses were overcome. Fear. I believe it's fear that is the number one reason people don't go. I'm thankful that I will not be giving my daughter that excuse to not experience her world. She will have been an international traveler from day 1, or rather day 60. She'll never have the experience of having to apply for a passport, just having to renew them.

It's a handful of paperwork and just over $100. I think it's a small price to pay to become a citizen of our world. It was the best gift my mother ever gave me, I hope Maya will agree.

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Not all who wander are lost



...and to be sure not all who are sedentary are found.




If you've ever been utterly lost and known you were right where you were supposed to be, if you didn't know what you were eating just that it was delicious. If the idea of wives circles and mortgages give you the spins and not the good kind you get from drinking wine from the bottle then I'm writing to you.


The idea that bigger is better makes me sad, it makes me feel like our world is losing it's soul. We don't question why we need all the things we think we need, more square footage, more toys, more credit, we just want it, it's what we're supposed to want. I want loud, disorganized medinas. I want to walk on uneven streets at 4:30am. I want to measure my life and my accomplishments on the lives I've touched, what I've done for others not just for myself. The nights I've sat and laughed over bottles and bottles of cheap wine with good friends. I want to be a citizen of our world not just of a country, state or town.