Traveling on a Floating Global Village
Contributed by Nicholas Pediaditakis, MD, DLFAPA
Our country is enormous and beautiful. Each corner of it has its own magic. Igor, my grandson, together with my daughter Nicole and I, boarded a truly enormous ship together with 3,500 fellow humans coming from every part of our planet. It was an experience to behold and cherish for years.
For the next week, all of us together, we cruised from Seattle all the way to Juneau, Alaska, hugging the coast of British Colombia and into the Alaska fjords. God’s country! The mist shrouded mountains with hundreds of water falls cascading thousands of feet down below. The golden eagles soared and then swooped down, their talons extended skillfully, scooping a salmon here and there. Lonely seals perched on ice floats in the fjords, in the bleak landscape.
Igor climbed the mountain when in Juneau for several hours, beaming in gladness from the experience when he came back. It was a place of wonder and pray as we’re taking it all in. And wonder and pray I did for hours!
I also had plenty of time to interact with my fellow passengers while eating together our fancy meals and staring through the windows at the passing wonders.The Boat was truly a modern Noah’s ark. It was filled with fellow humans who came from every corner of our Earth. It was a floating global village. They were all there: the crusty rancher from Montana telling stories of his 25,000 acres and 2,000 cattle; the German engineer with his elegant wife taking their second honey moon; the world literature graduate from Mauritius — an exotic, far away island located at the south tip of Africa — who served our meals; the lovely young girl from Ukraine, a medical student, who ushered us to our tables; the retired oil engineer from Alabama discussing energy and problems of its storage; the mathematician from Mumbai who served our meals; the courteous, affable Captain who was Greek, and who, of course, had us for dinner in his table once; and, the social worker from Rumania, who back home is taking care of refugees from Syria! All with their regional or foreign accents, eager to talk and exchange views. And talk we did!
Myself, once more, pleasantly confirmed my awareness, born from experience and knowledge: humans, no matter from what corner of the Earth, we all are truly brothers under the skin. We share the same concerns, same dreams, same desires, same worries and all of us had had, more or less, similar allotment of adversities. And another surprise: we were all well informed, aware of the world happenings, and the new developments taking place. We all worried of the inane tribal strifes taking place in various parts of the world, worried of the global warming, and the disparity of poverty for billions of us and enormous wealth for few. I truly felt we all were from the same little town, the same neighborhood. To my happy surprise, this feeling also was shared by my fellow travelers. It soothed my heart, leaving me glad and filled with hope for us humans on this little planet of ours.
Copyright © 2015 by Nicholas Pediaditakis, MD
