Home is all about the people you meet on your journey. It’s the quintessential meaning of life.
Additionally to relationships and friendships lasting a lifetime, I am humbled and awed by many encounters along my way.
I remember a friend from Bangladesh who still works on the same island in the Maldives he has worked on for the last twenty-five years. Like many, he is far away from his home and family, allowed only one vacation per year. After all this time, he is still living in staff quarters with more than twenty men to one room. He has one of the kindest souls I have ever known.
I remember meeting new workers from Bangladesh on their way to the Maldives, terrified on the flight, breaking the bathroom doors on the airplane because they couldn’t read pictures or symbols to figure out how to open these doors they had never seen before. Lining up at immigration, they held on to each other for dear life.
Or I remember an eighty-year old man in Macau, working in a parking garage, who stopped me every time to ask if I could teach him a bit of English. One time he pointed to a dirty shopping bag and looked at me with curious, smiling eyes, wanting me to teach him the slogan printed on the bag: “I am a plastic bag, treat me responsibly!”
I remember so many encounters in Europe, Asia, the Americas, and Africa, the humblest people often teaching me the greatest lessons, reminding me how precious life is and how little we truly need, to live a good life and make a difference.