I've Walked the Earth

I've walked the earth.
It takes so long.
Here one corner, and there another.
The more I walk, the more corners I find. 
I want to look through them all, to get to know them all,
but the more I look, the more I realize I don't have enough eyes for everything.
For every corner I explore, I have to leave another untouched.
With every turn I take, I am farther from where I began.
At first this doesn't bother me--but then I wonder where I am going in such a hurry.
When can I stop looking?
If I will never be able to reach every corner, then how many corners do I seek before I can go home?
When can my eyes, so eager to explore, finally explore home?
I have seen all the secret places far from where I live.
But I left home in such a hurry that I forget to seek its secrets first.
I've walked the earth.
Then my feet led me back, to walk my own land.

--

I like to travel. I can't say I don't. But I don't travel much and most of my travels have been to relatively nearby locations--and I'm okay with that. Sure, I'd like to branch out some more in the future, but I'm not in any hurry. There are so many more nearby places that I either haven't visited at all or haven't gotten to know very well yet. If there are places nearby to me that I would go to if I were traveling and yet I haven't been to them yet, where is the sense in that?

I want to cultivate the here and now first. When you do that, you can flow more naturally outward to see your place in the greater whole. The city in the county in the state in the country in the continent in the hemisphere in the world in the universe. When I say that I want to focus in on here before there, I don't mean to say that I want to ignore other places; I just mean that you need to have a place that you are directly interacting with on a daily basis. How can you have a good influence on other places if you don't start with your own place?