On My Way to Kevin Bacon
Traveling is funny sometimes. In a lot of ways, it gives me a huge appreciation for just how big and diverse the world is. It can be awesome to marvel in the size of it all. On the opposite vein, the more I travel, the more I realize just how small and connected the world is. Connected through the internet, yes, but what I really mean is connected through networks of people.
You know the thing where every actor is supposedly at most six connections from Kevin Bacon? It’s gotta be even closer than that. I’m pretty sure I am less than six degrees to Kevin Bacon. I know for a fact that I’m only THREE degrees to Obama, and that’s pretty much a deus ex machina, making me maximum four degrees to anybody, even Kevin Bacon.
People think I’m goofy when I meet somebody from X University and I ask, “do you know this person?” But I love asking this question. Because some of the time, THEY DO.
Since arriving in Taipei, I’ve met four people from Ohio, two people who go to different Universities with different friends from my high school, someone who knows one of my university friends because they lived in Tunisia at the same time, and someone who grew up with somebody I sat next to in class all of last semester.
As much as I resent instagram for owning so much real-estate in my brain, I love it’s “Also followed by:” feature. It’s a crazy feeling when you follow someone you meet across the world on instagram and see that you have mutual friends.
Just how connected we are by networks of people has still not stopped blowing my mind, and I hope it never does. So no, I will not stop asking strangers who go to a 40,000 person university across the world if they know my friend who also goes to the same 40,000 person university, because I love how small this world is.
And Kevin Bacon, I’m coming for you.