The impetus for a blog was a decision to change up my entire life. Back in 2007. Since leaving the country, it's been a mostly downhill slide. Not as in negative, but as in easier. The hardest part was taking that first step. Everything that's followed has slid into place. Decidedly, this is a good feeling.
Questioning life existence, beliefs and my notions of what's important, especially over these last few years has led me on a round about path, back to the beginning. When I think of what I want out of life, I could easily superimpose my four-year-old self onto my current existence and they would meld together like a tracing overlapped. I am one in the same, who I've always been.
So why is it necessary to leave everything, to only discover I am myself?
In order to become more like myself as a young person, I had to question my thoughts on life, which means that I had to question what was important, question what I believed about the US, question my prejudices about other countries, and nationalities, and ways of living. I, myself, had to take the side road for a while, meandering along, noticing the trees, taking time to listen to people and laugh, and see the similarities and the differences. Mostly, I have seen the similarities. Mostly I have seen the good. Mostly, I have realised that who was as a child is who what I am now.
That child believed in equality, fairness, abounding boldness, self-confidence, laughter, spending time in a dream world, walking barefoot, loving her family... and more.
If I can see the world through my child's eyes, without fear, and with boldness, then I have evolved back to the beginning, but to a higher place. Perhaps why I love children so much, they are yet to be pushed into a corner of hopelessness, or rigidity, or the misconception of controlling everything in order to live a good life...
In the NYT, on exercising your mental strength:
Opinion: A Case of Mental Courage
By DAVID BROOKS August 23, 2010
The novelist Fanny Burney stared pain in the face, teaching a lesson in character we would do well to recover.
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2 comments:
We here in Bloomington call it the down side of the mountain which you have climbed - the "good side".
who are you,little i
(five or six years old)
peering from some high
window;at the gold
of november sunset
(and feeling:that if day
has to become night
this is a beautiful way)
ee cummings
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