Making the World Small

This year I finally made it through G.K. Chesterton's "Heretics", which is an amazing book. You can actually read the whole thing free online at pagebypagebooks.com. But one passage in particular struck me, in a chapter entitled "On Mr. Rudyard Kipling and Making the World Small." Here's one of my favorite paragraphs:

It is inspiriting without doubt to whizz in a motor-car round the earth, to feel Arabia as a whirl of sand or China as a flash of rice-fields. But Arabia is not a whirl of sand and China is not a flash of rice-fields. They are ancient civilizations with strange virtues buried like treasures. If we wish to understand them it must not be as tourists or inquirers, it must be with the loyalty of children and the great patience of poets. To conquer these places is to lose them. The man standing in his own kitchen-garden, with fairyland opening at the gate, is the man with large ideas.

It's nice to live in Europe, and it's nice to go on side trips now and then (my parents flew me to London to meet them 3 weeks ago...it was great!). There are so many things to discover. But the last few months especially, I've been enjoying feeling really at home in Vienna. There's so much to explore and enjoy right here. Here's to settling down, making friends, and getting to know one place well, and to appreciate it for what it is.