The wide world is all about you; you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot forever fence it out.
J.R.R. Tolkien
Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.
Maya Angelou
Where in the hell is Matt Harding you ask? He is everywhere (not in the omnipresent, creepy way, but in the literal he-traveled-the-world-and-it's-all-documented-in-5-second-clips way). My brother sent me this video in 2008 and after my mood the last few weeks, I thought I would revisit this for a pick-me-up. What I love is how simple this video is; it doesn't preach or spout philosophies on how you should live life but if you don't forward it on to 12 people you'll burn in hell. Instead, this video helps remind me why I have faith in humanity in short video clips of the world. And it helps remind me about the simple pleasures I enjoy and why I do some of the things I do--because there are people everywhere just like me, and some need a little help. After watching this, you can't help but feel like the world isn't this big, awful place (which is how I've been feeling lately). Maybe there is something within each one of us that binds us to one another, and the world is full of people who are all actually the same. We just speak in funny words in different places and that sometimes makes communication difficult and problems inevitable...
But everyone everywhere can dance. I'm thankful for videos and people like Matt who remind us that one little person is capable of doing a lot. And that one big world can be seen and united in a dance (hmm, perhaps WWIII can be avoided with a WW-DO: World Wide Dance-off?).
(Leave a comment if you have any favorite moments! I love the dog in Kuwait!)
And Outtakes!
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