The world is a big place in an even bigger universe.

This is a difficult question because I think my exposure to “the world” (I literally checked the definition of world in a dictionary so I could formulate a better answer) is limited by my geography, lifestyle, and environment.

First of all, I was born and raised on this tiny speck of an island in the middle of Earth’s largest ocean. How I saw the world in my first 18 years of life was limited to what my parents taught me, what I learned in school and church, and what I saw on TV. The Internet wasn’t really a thing back then.

I went to university in the mainland – my first time living away from American Samoa – and the world seemed bigger, more complex. People were different than back home, everyone was doing their own thing and they seemed busy all the time.

I just went along, not really knowing what I was doing at first. But instead of it all happening at once, I adapted slowly; made new friends (and lost some along the way), ate different food, traveled to cool places, spent way too much money (holla back if you had student loans too), got my degree, then came back home, got a job and readjusted to life on an island with a new view of what the world.

But that was 4 years ago, and even just the last few years of my life, how I see the world is vastly different than what it was out of college. I guess after all this, my answer is simply that my view of the world is changing. Just as I am changing. And so my perspectives will continue to shift. And it’s all a beautiful chaotic mess. I don’t know. I hope this answer is good enough.