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The world of the 21st century is becoming smaller

By Carl Heintze

It dawned on me the other day that we are all back from wherever we went. I mean my family. We are all back from wherever we went. I know this is probably a small moment to you, but it was a big deal to us.

Last week for a while we were spread across the world from Hawaii to India and points in between.

One of my granddaughters was in Paris (for the weekend, no less). She is temporarily in Barcelona, Spain, as part of a California state college program for undergraduates. She and one of her roommates went off to the French capital for a weekend.

One of my daughters was living it up at Ventana, the posh resort atop a mountain near Big Sur, celebrating her birthday with two friends. She made me promise I would not tell you which birthday it was, but she said the celebration was great.

Her husband was in Virginia visiting a former student and, incidentally, having a walk-through of the Oval Office while George W. was off somewhere.

My other daughter was working, but in a sense, she had an adventure or two, too. She lives out in the woods in Montana, where it has been cold and snowy, and getting to and from work is often an adventure. She sometimes has to drive 8 miles over unplowed roads to get to work.

My son was in Bangalore, India, on business. He dashes off to Bangalore every six months or so as if it were across the street.

But this trip he is still in recovery from a tortuous two-day flight back home. He got hung up in London on the way home, which did little to make him feel better.

And finally my wife and I were on the island of Kauai, making our annual mid-winter pilgrimage in search of sun and surf. (We found some of both.) This, too, isn't all that unusual. We've been going to Kauai for about 25 years now each winter. It's gotten so ordinary now it seems almost like going home.

So, as you can see, we were literally all over the map. I suppose the wonder is that we made it. We all got where we were going and, except for my granddaughter in Spain, we all got back safely. And she got back to Barcelona in time for Monday classes.

But that's not my point, nor is it to boast (well, not much, anyway), but to point out that it is just not very extraordinary for American families these days to have their members spread all over the globe. We live in a shrinking (and rapidly warming) world, and the more it shrinks the more likely are our family members to be off somewhere in some formerly exotic place doing something probably pretty ordinary.

For Americans, at least, it truly is one world. Here today and Afghanistan or Iraq tomorrow. There's almost nowhere in the world that isn't reachable in 24 hours. That privilege--if that's what it is--doesn't necessarily extend to all the world's citizens, of course.

For the poor of Nigeria or the embattled citizens of Iraq or Pakistan or Uganda, Nigeria, Colombia or Cuba, travel to somewhere else is not only not easy, it may not even be possible. The invisible but very real barriers of national boundaries still exist for millions of the world's citizens. Even for many Mexicans access to where they would like to be is possible only illegally. They crawl through unused storm sewers and risk death in the Sonoran desert to get where they want to be: here.

So I count travel as a privilege and I count myself as among the privileged to be able to consider the world as my world, open to me no matter where I might want to go, or at the least open to the members of my family so they can travel wherever job or vacation or educational needs takes them.

And it is well for me to remember that it wasn't always this way in my life.

Growing up, I remember being thrilled at being driven to get my first sight of the old Carquinez Bridge. It was only 15 miles from where I lived, but it seemed a long way on a two-lane road, and the bridge itself seemed immense.

But it wasn't long before it was dwarfed by the Bay and Golden Gate bridges. And it was not long after that that I found myself on the way to Europe.

The trip to Europe wasn't exactly pleasure, though. It seemed a long way. And I wasn't sure if I would make it back.

But I did, and so did thousands of other Americans, the first wave of the never-ending tide of Americans who have been almost everywhere. Like the British at the height of the British Empire, the sun never seems to set on the places we are going.

It's something I never would have imagined that day I first saw the new Carquinez Bridge.

I never dreamt I would visit most of Europe or Costa Rica or Mexico or Canada, that I would fly over Greenland and cross the Pacific to Australia and New Zealand, or that my son would one day make what are to him ordinary regular trips to India, or that my granddaughter would whisk off to Paris for the weekend as if it were San Francisco.

The world has become mine. The world has become ours. That may not seem audacious to many, including my children and grandchildren, but it certainly does to me.

I just hope I am bearing not only the privilege, but also the responsibility of one world.