How's Your World?

A Traveler's Greeting

Billions scattered throughout its length
Time flowing through an endless river bank
I want to visit the distant shores of different lives
connect to countless private worlds
meet former strangers
and after sharing my stories
greet them with “How’s your world?”

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

“How’s your world?”

These are the words of greeting which Malcolm Reynolds asks Inara, his love interest and dramatic foil, in the movie “Serenity”, based on cult scifi series “Firefly”.

The phrase means “Hello and how are you?” in a future where people live on different planets but are connected by “broadwave”. Someday humanity might be scattered among the stars but the human condition will remain a constant.

While billions of us, scattered throughout Earth, are connected by the Internet, our sense of self and life is defined by the world we make for ourselves, each a private personal reality. This is why that this simple sci-fi greeting is more than a clever line of made up futuristic good manners.

It’s a phrase we can use today and it’s one reason for my writing. I want to share with people what’s going on in “my world” AND I want to know about them too. I want to reach across the various physical, social and virtual spaces, which separate and define each of us in many unique ways, and say “hello”.

I want to know many people and learn from them. I want to know of their worlds.

Our collective gravitational pull grows when we connect.

Time moves for us the same way, flowing past us like a giant river, but each of us have different views and shorelines. The space we’re in shapes us at the same time we reshape it in turn. Our differences can draw us closer.

When I began to write, I began to learn new things and rediscover more about myself - how I think, what I see and know from my world - but there’s so much more out there.

I want to enjoy the view from the distant shores of different lives. I want to connect to strangers scattered across countless private worlds who are ready to share as friends.

If you’re reading this, then I count you and your world as one filled with stories to tell.

I want to meet soon to be former strangers, and after sharing my stories, I want to ask them “How’s your world?”