The irony is that this story begins at the “It’s a Small World” ride at Disneyland. Even Disneyland, the happiest place on Earth, turned my 6-year-old world into a nightmare when I lost sight of my mom for a few minutes outside the ride. It felt so conflicting, because despite how I had just been convinced that “it’s a small world after all,” the world seemed to grow magnitudes during those terrifying 150 seconds or so before a Disneyland worker helped me find my mom. I learned then that the world isn’t so small after all.
As I grew older, I learned more about the world. I knew that maps and asking for directions when I was lost were alternatives to crying in the middle of the street, terrified. But that incident has left me with a permanent wariness of the world.
There are so many people and things I don’t know in life. I could go on and on with statistics—the number of undiscovered species in an acre of the Amazon rainforest, the dark abysses of the oceans, and perhaps even languages, historical events; anything and everything that we don’t know adds to my alienation from the world. Because of this alienation, I have decided upon my mission, one that I will strive to achieve, along with all my other daily activities, for the rest of my life.
Learning about the world and having a deeper understanding of the people around me helps make the world seem smaller. There are so many questions in every possible subject: math, history, science, English, and even art. However, one of the most intriguing things about learning is that every question may bring answers, but every question will without a doubt bring more questions.
If you look at it like this, it might seem an exhaustive effort to make one’s purpose “learning”, but to me, the universe is bursting full of answers. And for me to face my fear of the world and the strangers around me, I must learn about them. Because the world is too big not to.
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