Is your world shrinking?
It's raining this morning deep in the heart of beautiful Texas. I am safely cocooned in my house, coffee cup resting near my lists of things to pack, things to do for Paul and possible gift ideas. I open my computer and the headline screams, "Egyptian Air Flight Disappears", another reminder of the wider world in which we live.
We all have bucket lists and we started to write them back when we were young and busy ferrying our children around to every possible enrichment event we could think of, saving for their education and funding for that rainy day called retirement. Now that rainy day is here but terrorism, Islamist terrorism to be exact, has changed the world.
They say timing is everything and hindsight suggests that leaving the boys at home with a case of Spaghettios and a rented lion tamer might have freed us up to go to Luxor. Now, less than two weeks before my departure, I consider that there are places in the world I will never see.
Egypt with its Pyramids and Valley of the Kings is one. Cross off the Nile. Istanbul, that romantic Constantinople of literature, is likely another. Who ever imagined one would think twice about tooling around Brussels in search of chocolate? Years ago in Brazil security was a big concern. But we were not fearing bombs or being strafed with automatic weaponry. Then we were just worried about being killed for our Timex.
So now we surrender our water bottles and lip gloss, are x-rayed and patted down, and for what? I will continue to wear my zipper cargo pocket pants from Chico's even though I've been told by a TSA agent with a wand that having zippers in inappropriate places attracts more attention than crossing the Mexican border with a big bag of cocaine balanced on top of your head. And I suppose young parents will continue to endure having their packaged breast milk and ziploc bags of cheddar Goldfish pawed over and tested.
While we may be inconvenienced and overcharged and harried I am unsure if we are any safer. I hate to live in fear but aging does breed caution.
We can only wonder what bucket list destinations get crossed off our list tomorrow.
It's raining this morning deep in the heart of beautiful Texas. I am safely cocooned in my house, coffee cup resting near my lists of things to pack, things to do for Paul and possible gift ideas. I open my computer and the headline screams, "Egyptian Air Flight Disappears", another reminder of the wider world in which we live.
We all have bucket lists and we started to write them back when we were young and busy ferrying our children around to every possible enrichment event we could think of, saving for their education and funding for that rainy day called retirement. Now that rainy day is here but terrorism, Islamist terrorism to be exact, has changed the world.
They say timing is everything and hindsight suggests that leaving the boys at home with a case of Spaghettios and a rented lion tamer might have freed us up to go to Luxor. Now, less than two weeks before my departure, I consider that there are places in the world I will never see.
Egypt with its Pyramids and Valley of the Kings is one. Cross off the Nile. Istanbul, that romantic Constantinople of literature, is likely another. Who ever imagined one would think twice about tooling around Brussels in search of chocolate? Years ago in Brazil security was a big concern. But we were not fearing bombs or being strafed with automatic weaponry. Then we were just worried about being killed for our Timex.
So now we surrender our water bottles and lip gloss, are x-rayed and patted down, and for what? I will continue to wear my zipper cargo pocket pants from Chico's even though I've been told by a TSA agent with a wand that having zippers in inappropriate places attracts more attention than crossing the Mexican border with a big bag of cocaine balanced on top of your head. And I suppose young parents will continue to endure having their packaged breast milk and ziploc bags of cheddar Goldfish pawed over and tested.
While we may be inconvenienced and overcharged and harried I am unsure if we are any safer. I hate to live in fear but aging does breed caution.
We can only wonder what bucket list destinations get crossed off our list tomorrow.
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