Where shall I begin?
Lately, my hopes for the future both immediate and long term are somehow so simultaneously promising, exciting and contradictory to one another that I don't know what to think of them.
Here are some deep convictions that keep re-emerging in my mind. I would have been so smart to just simply live my childhood dream of becoming a veterinarian. I could have pursued that years ago and saved myself a lot of unnecessary confusion and been almost an expert by now. Ah yes, how true it is that hindsight is 20/20. On another note, I could also likely excel as an herbal doctor given my love for helping people to feel better and my love for plants, nature and knowing uses that plants can offer.
I also often feel a pull back to my undergrad area of interpersonal communication. I don't know what that means, but it still interests and feels important to me.
In unrelated news, I am thinking long and hard about how to ease myself back into American life when I return next month. Yikes, next month. Taking deep breaths. The good thing is that I have experience knowing myself and how I feel after having lived in Africa for some time and then colliding back into the U.S. during the holidays, of all possible times to return. A time when materialism is at its peak, family and friends seem stressed and trying to do too much, planning, organizing and largely forgetting about the rest of the planet for a few weeks. Whereas I will also be stressed for my own silly reasons but conversely spending about 80% of my time thinking about another part of the planet. Feeling like that place was a dream. A good dream that ended so abruptly that I am left desperately trying to cling to everything that happened in that dream. The characters, the colors, the scenery, the goods and bads, my overall view of myself during the dream. And so on.
The truth is that it wasn't a dream. So I will work daily on convincing myself that the whole year did, in fact occur and I was, in fact, doing all I was doing during it. Sounds easy enough right? It's not. At least I know it's coming. Which I do believe will help me this time.
I remember in college, my favorite professor Dr. Miura teaching us about communicating with loved ones after a life-changing trip. I don't remember what theory that the point fell under, but the gist was this: those of us who are able or choose to have trips that end up being life altering will always experience two major phases of communication with our loved ones upon our return. First we come back, everyone is ecstatic and eager to hear some wild stories and ask their various questions. This part is so fun for everyone involved. Then that phase ends after some rough amount of time- say a couple months. Next, even though that phase is over and loved ones are satisfied with the answers to their questions and their curiosity has waned to near non-existance, the traveler will incessantly recall, "oh when I lived in Kenya blank blank blank" and "I remember this one time in Kenya" or "oh my dear friend from Kenya"...
In this second phase the traveler still feels brimming full of experiences that must be shared but those close to them, as much as they are happy for the traveler, feel a sense of "enough already", and the stories are like broken records even though the details may change. Man, I wish I could remember Dr. Miura's wisdom on what the traveler should do at that time.
I don't know where I am going with all of this but just wanted to blurt it out. There it is.
Lately, my hopes for the future both immediate and long term are somehow so simultaneously promising, exciting and contradictory to one another that I don't know what to think of them.
Here are some deep convictions that keep re-emerging in my mind. I would have been so smart to just simply live my childhood dream of becoming a veterinarian. I could have pursued that years ago and saved myself a lot of unnecessary confusion and been almost an expert by now. Ah yes, how true it is that hindsight is 20/20. On another note, I could also likely excel as an herbal doctor given my love for helping people to feel better and my love for plants, nature and knowing uses that plants can offer.
I also often feel a pull back to my undergrad area of interpersonal communication. I don't know what that means, but it still interests and feels important to me.
In unrelated news, I am thinking long and hard about how to ease myself back into American life when I return next month. Yikes, next month. Taking deep breaths. The good thing is that I have experience knowing myself and how I feel after having lived in Africa for some time and then colliding back into the U.S. during the holidays, of all possible times to return. A time when materialism is at its peak, family and friends seem stressed and trying to do too much, planning, organizing and largely forgetting about the rest of the planet for a few weeks. Whereas I will also be stressed for my own silly reasons but conversely spending about 80% of my time thinking about another part of the planet. Feeling like that place was a dream. A good dream that ended so abruptly that I am left desperately trying to cling to everything that happened in that dream. The characters, the colors, the scenery, the goods and bads, my overall view of myself during the dream. And so on.
The truth is that it wasn't a dream. So I will work daily on convincing myself that the whole year did, in fact occur and I was, in fact, doing all I was doing during it. Sounds easy enough right? It's not. At least I know it's coming. Which I do believe will help me this time.
I remember in college, my favorite professor Dr. Miura teaching us about communicating with loved ones after a life-changing trip. I don't remember what theory that the point fell under, but the gist was this: those of us who are able or choose to have trips that end up being life altering will always experience two major phases of communication with our loved ones upon our return. First we come back, everyone is ecstatic and eager to hear some wild stories and ask their various questions. This part is so fun for everyone involved. Then that phase ends after some rough amount of time- say a couple months. Next, even though that phase is over and loved ones are satisfied with the answers to their questions and their curiosity has waned to near non-existance, the traveler will incessantly recall, "oh when I lived in Kenya blank blank blank" and "I remember this one time in Kenya" or "oh my dear friend from Kenya"...
In this second phase the traveler still feels brimming full of experiences that must be shared but those close to them, as much as they are happy for the traveler, feel a sense of "enough already", and the stories are like broken records even though the details may change. Man, I wish I could remember Dr. Miura's wisdom on what the traveler should do at that time.
I don't know where I am going with all of this but just wanted to blurt it out. There it is.
2 comments:
Blurt away anytime, wise one. Hugs, Momma
Thanks Mom, for still reading. Can't wait to hug you.
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