(no subject)
i am obsessed with learning about other cultures, other ways of thinking and living ..
daydreaming about the day I set foot on the continent of africa .. of sailing around the world, paddling down the amazon, sitting around a fire with tribal people and sharing their food and lives, trekking around the worlds spectacular volcanos, snorkelling in tropic waters, sleeping in thatched huts, worshipping at godly ceremonies and dens of black magic, moving around the world without a plan, guided by instinct, connecting through trust and touching the magicness of others.
it appleals to the side of me that is daring, rash, careless and idealistic. while i haven't explained this yet to my mother, i think later in life i may be a modern-day nomad of sorts. bare bones existence. it will take some money but not tons. it is really ALL i want in life. period.
i also am no stranger to negative thoughts & depression. it's a tough thing .. a slippery slope of sorts .. on one had, i am amazingly strong, resilient, positive .. and, on the other, the melancholy calls out to me & I answer ... relishing in it.
it requires constant vigilence & determination to steer my life in the overall direction i want ... sometimes i'm right on it .. other times i slip .. but 2 steps forward & 1 backwards is still movement in the right direction.
over the course of my life thus far, i have to admit that i've found it tough to understand my own behavior .. tough to stop blaming the world or other people for my problems .. tough to accept personal responsibility .. tough to have the chutzpah to raise the hood, look inside & start watching how the internal combustion engine of my life works .. to see (and admit to myself) honestly what is & isn't working for me ..
30 years of my engrained emotionally-backed responses to my life are not easy to break but just admitting that there may be another way to approach things is more half the battle, i think.
i think a lot of folks drift through this world with a vague sense of uneasiness .. they are annoyed with traffic, with their unhappy partner, their job, their grades, their friends, their kids that require just so much ... and they just don't stop long enough to look inside ...
it's like opening up that closet you've been shoving stuff into for years ... when the door opens & the dishelved, disorganized, unhealthy stuff is there ... staying present in the moment, realizing that we really can handle anything that happens to us & that, in the end, we can't choose everything that happens to us in life but the last of the human freedoms is our own reaction to whatever life throws at us.
i think you could really argue that the only thing that matters is this life is one's attitude .. i believe it is the only thing that truly means anything.
sometime, if you - whoever winds up reading this - gets a chance, read victor frankl's "man's search for meaning". it was one of the most important books i've ever read.