rechelle's lifelyrics

I’ve just been thinking about how small “my world” is. I have my family, my church, a few people I know in my community, and a sprinkling of people in other remote places, by chance interactions, or on this world wide web. So my world seems small when I compare it to what I think I see of others who are well known by way of the work they do or their social circles, but I really only see a snapshot. In the last couple of hundred years, most of our lives have gotten a lot bigger (and in some ways smaller) through the increase in communications and technology. Before radio, if you wanted music in your home, you had to know how to play an instrument or sing with your family. Before television, other people’s stories were in the newspapers, radio, or live entertainment. Now we can pick and choose what narrative we hear, whose stories we follow, and what brand of news we want to consume. But how much of our world is filled with strangers instead of real interaction with other humans in our everyday life? How much of our story is built by the relationships we have nurtured in our worlds versus the snapshots we collect that aren’t really our own?

I think about how people’s worlds were even smaller before the internet, or even centuries ago, when there was only a shaded-glass view of their existence because of the lack of contemporary record keeping like photography and video. I think about people I read of in Bible times, who had a nomadic lifestyle, or spent their days in a very exclusive environment. Do you think anyone in previous generations ever suspected that their words, or their stories, would be discussed hundreds – or even thousands – of years later? They were living their lives before perhaps radio, television, or the internet even existed. They may have had no understanding that people were living out their own stories miles and oceans away, and even on the other side of the world.

One thing is for sure. Trouble, joy, trauma, and triumph are common to mankind. I often think about people who have walked this earth many years before I set foot here, and I feel like there were very few who realized the impact they would have on future generations – either for good or bad. Even in my own generation, it’s interesting what things stand out about my parents and the childhood I experienced. I’m sure my story is very different than theirs, since I had a very limited childlike perspective compared to the struggles of life and relationships they were dealing with as they tried to raise me. I remember I learned the most about my Dad and his life when I gathered together with his siblings and relatives after he passed away. Yet there were little things he did or said that influenced me many years after he was gone. I still hear my Grandma’s cute little sayings or stories she shared with me almost every day, and she’s been gone over 20 years.

I don’t mind that my world is small. It is full of the influences of the past, the love I share with my family and friends of the present, and the relationships I’m building with my children and grandchildren who will go on after I’m gone from this world.