Holiday Greetings, Members of Trade to Travel       and Owners of Luxury Leisure Assets Worldwide...

With 2006 drawing to a close and 2007, chock-full of promise, awaiting us on the other side of this weekend, I want to wish you vibrant health, exceptional prosperity, and dreams-come-true.

As we each prepare to greet the new year, I would like to share the following quote by Rusty Schweickart, American Astronaut.  In it, he paints a powerful picture – allowing us to envision a perspective which most will never experience.  At TTT, we have this quote posted in our office to remind us to consciously “pull focus” to see and act on, “The Big Picture.”  May it inspire you as it does us.

Cheers!!
Leah

“Up there you go around every hour and a half, time after time after time.  As you eat breakfast you look out the window and there’s the Mediterranean area, and Greece, and Rome, and North Africa, and the Sinai.  And you realize in one glance that what you’re seeing is what was the whole history of man for years- the cradle of civilization.  And you think of all the history you can imagine looking at the scene. And you go around down across North Africa and out over the Indian Ocean.  And look up at that great sub-continent of India.  And Ceylon off to the side, Burma, Southeast Asia, out over the Philippines, and up across the monstrous Pacific Ocean, that vast body of water - you’ve never realized how big that is before.  And you finally come up across the coast of California and look for those friendly things: Los Angeles, and Phoenix, and on across El Paso.  And there’s Houston, there’s home, and you look and sure enough there’s the Astrodome. And you identify with that, you know - it’s an attachment. And that identity – that you identify with Houston, and then you identify with Los Angeles and Phoenix and New Orleans and everything.  And the next thing you recognize in yourself, is you’re identifying with North Africa.  You look forward to that, you anticipate it.  And there it is.  That whole process begins to shift what it is you identify with.  You begin to recognize that your identity is with the whole thing.  You look down there and you can imagine how many borders and boundaries you crossed again and again and again.  And you don’t even see ‘em.  You know there are thousands of people killing each other over some imaginary line that you can’t see.  From where you see it, the thing is a whole, and it’s so beautiful.  And you wish you could take one from each side in hand and say, “Look at it from this perspective.  Look at that.  What’s important?” And now the contrast between the bright blue and white Christmas tree ornament and that black sky, that infinite universe, really comes through.  The size of it, the significance of it – it becomes so small and so fragile, and such a precious little spot in the universe, that you can block it out with your thumb.  And you realize that on that small spot, that little blue and white thing, is everything that means anything to you.  All of history and music and poetry, and art and war and death and birth and love, tears, joy, games - all of it is on that little spot out there that you can cover with your thumb.”