Is it a small, small world?

It's been awhile since I've posted...doesn't mean nothing has been going on...in many ways, quite the opposite...two weeks ago we got our daughter back after a year as a nanny in Switzerland. It's great to have her home! The seventeen-year-old high school graduate has come home a 19-year-old young woman. I hope we're ready...anyway, we were able to go over and spend time with her in her stomping grounds. A memorable trip...since her return, she's been catching up with friends and former classmates. My wife recounted one of her conversations with a classmate; how they spent an hour together and that classmate didn't ask one question about our daughter's year in Switzerland...now, I can be judgmental in a heartbeat and I don't mean to say that's all this classmate is about, but it seems that it's very easy in our culture to focus the conversation on myself and not get outside to view the other's perspective...so often we can make life "all about me". In that kind of mindset, the world is shrinking...around me...I thought of the Disneyland ride to a small, small world...Our daughter's world grew this last year...we asked her what changed in her. She talked about generosity, discovering who she is apart from us, viewing things from others' perspectives...all growing world kinds of things...how do we as parents facilitate the growing of our kids' worlds? And, as I've found, as we do that, ours grows too...Recently I was reading something that I believe, relates to this idea of a bigger and bigger world rather than a small, small world. Martin Buber is a Catholic theologian. One of the ways he describes God is as wholly other...when I read that before I thought that meant that God is different than us...of a different kind...I thought rather theologically...those things are maybe true, but this time I thought of it more relationally... (isn't God's nature relational?). God is love. Love focuses on "the other"...God is so wholly other in his nature that he makes his mission, his good news, about "the other"...about us...about you and me...and when I make my life about others, I'm expressing God...so, the growing world is about re-orienting my life (to use Jesus' words - losing my life) to others. My daughter is teaching me about that...