A Small World

“It’s a small world after all” — any person who has visited Disney and its eponymous ride (apologies for the “earworm”) knows the phrase well. But sometimes the week’s headlines drive the point home.

Almost 5,000 miles away from the East End, terrible wildfires are destroying swaths of the Hawaiian island of Maui, which has a population of about 165,000 people — fewer people than are currently on the South Fork, midsummer. But the connections are many: At 27east.com, you can read about a direct link via Tiana Beach in Hampton Bays, which is the summer destination of Keenan and Pam Reader and their two daughters, Kaia and Ellie, who spent the rest of the year at their house in Lahaina on Maui. Keenan is a lifeguard, both here and on Maui, as well as a college counselor at his daughters’ school in Lahaina. (Another Tiana Beach lifeguard, Anthony Cappadona, slept on their couch when he first made the move to Lahaina, where he now resides.)

That house is now gone, taken by the raging wildfires, and the Reader family, and Cappadona, are left picking up the pieces and helping their community recover from the devastation. An interview last week found them mostly grateful for having escaped with their lives. Cappadona is helping with search-and-rescue operations.

The South Fork is a crossroads of sorts: It brings together people from all over the world, often for a few days or weeks in the summer, but those visits often leave a lasting impression, and the web of personal relationships remains long after geography has intruded. It’s also not just among the ultra-wealthy: Despite the luxurious settings, these are working class people who serve their neighbors in their chosen places of residence.

Every international headline, it seems, resonates deeply within the local community. That’s true in many communities, but it’s particularly the case with a thriving summertime mecca for so many people who drop anchor and entwine themselves with people here, adding it to their network. Nothing that happens in Maui — or Ukraine, or Mexico, or Niger — is truly removed from our local lives. Those connections glow and bring us all together.

It’s also important to keep in mind that these events, so far away, take up our attention for a brief time, but then they start to fade, or are overshadowed by new, stunning events elsewhere. It’s a concern of the Readers, who fear that their plight will be a headline only for so long, even as their struggle goes on.

In a small world, it’s incumbent on us to show compassion, give support and, most of all, keep in our thoughts the people affected by tragedy — because they are us.