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Reader question: Please explain “close to home”, as in this sentence: “In a time of rapid globalization, distant challenges and distant threats are felt close to home.” My comments: Globalization brings people closer together, that’s why. What once distant is now felt close, for example, as airplanes make it possible for you to have a meeting in New York today, and another meeting in London tomorrow. What’s once far away and disconnected is now connected and “close to home”. Home is, of course, where we live. If something happens at home and to our family members, it has a bigger effect on us than what happens to other people elsewhere, especially far away. Take traffic accidents, for instance. When we read the news that, say, last year, a certain large number of people got killed on the road worldwide, it has an effect on us but the effect may not be big and devastating, not as if one of our friends got hit on the road and lost a leg or something like that. In the former example, road related deaths worldwide, though a large number, sounds like a statistic, a mere number, but in the latter example when our close friend whom we saw just the other day got hit, the effect on us is direct and therefore more acute. What happens to our friend feels much closer to home because of our relationship and connection. Let’s take another example. Last week, 24 tourists from Liaoning Province died while visiting Taiwan after their bus caught fire. Their bus driver and local guide were also killed. | 
