2,372 Miles to Hong Kong (at 35,000 feet)

I just finished watching "Barney's Version" and one line stuck with me afterwards. In a beautiful scene overlooking the New York skyline (!), Paul Giamatti's character, Barney, is pursuing the love of his life, Miriam, and trying to convince her to fall for him. She knows that he is deeply troubled and she warns him,


    Life is made up of little things - minutes, hours, naps, and routine. And it has to be enough.

They fall in love and build a life full of little things - lunches at their favorite restaurant, cooking dinner together, and the comfort of always knowing that their partner would be lying next to them each night. I never cease to be amazed at the joy I find in all of the little things - walking around our apartment in the dark and knowing every floorboard, a smile or a cooking tip from our corner grocer, a weekend on the lake immersed in the comfort of nature and family, and the nights I get to sit around with my friends laughing so hard we cry. It's hard to imagine being away from any of it for a single minute and, to be frank, I'm brought to tears at the thought that in about four hours, I'm going to step off this plane without any of it.

With all of the tears comes a tiny smile - my best friend and I are off on an adventure that we have talked about and planned together for years. I've been listening to the Fleet Foxes song "Helplesness Blues" a lot recently and one verse keeps running through my head:

   If I know only one thing
   It's that every thing that I see
   Of the world outside is so inconceivable
   Often I barely can speak

The world - be it the little things on 92nd Street or Roaring Brook Lake or in Loveland, and the big things a half a world away - is inconceivably wonderful and I can't wait to see a little bit more of it.