Beyond Borders

Trey Smith

One of the wondrous things about the internet is the opportunity to share with people the world over. Like any blog, this one receives visitors from many corners of the earth. Between March 5 - 8, readers from 33 nations (other than the US) visited The Rambling Taoists.

Here's the list: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Malta, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, United Arab Emigrates and the United Kingdom.

To be sure, some of these folks were just passing by. They followed a link and, when they wound up here, they exclaimed in their own tongue, WTF? But we have many, many regular readers from points all over. For those who access this blog in their own language, I often wonder how our ramblings come across.

Imagine if all of us met in a large room. What an interesting event that would be! (I, of course, would be hiding in the closet -- far too many people for me to handle all at once.) I'm guessing we would be a mixture of young and old, male and female, rich and poor, urban and rural, religious and non-religious.

Unless we had ample interpreters available, a lot of us wouldn't be able to understand what a lot of the others were saying and vice versa! I suppose we would soon devolve into communicating by some fairly universal non-verbal methods - smiles, laughter, handshakes and hugs.

I don't know about you, but that thought gives me a very warm feeling!

(If you are a semi-regular reader from a country different than the US, why not say hi in your own language in the comments section.)