Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Life Less Seriously

Last week I'd been back in NY a whole two days when I decided to jump ship and head north to Canada with my dad. Our two dogs hopped in the truck with us and we drove up to our cottage. My dad taught me how to pump water up from the lake to the house so we could flush the toilet and wash the dishes and how to run the generator so darkness doesn't mean bedtime. It was probably the only chance to get up there before the crash of work and school fell on me.

There's this thing going on right now that I hate. Well, two things. Firstly, anyone I've been friends with from RIT is graduating this weekend and scattering around the country. Secondly, my friend Kate is also moving.

There was this whole idea of coming back and seeing returning as a challenge to take on and tackle but after leaving multiple times now for extended periods of time, I can honestly say it: I don't miss Rochester and I am sad to be back. Happy to be with people I love again, but it's hard to explain. It's just not me here. Lately I've been finding myself reverting back to more of who I am. Experiencing and experimenting with music, food, people, and situations has been one of the greatest parts of my life so far. But even after getting into Mozart and Beethoven, I still love Linkin Park and Eminem. Having been a busy bee living the college life, I love when everyday life's a challenge and still simple.

When things get frustrating or difficult and one is in a place one desires to be doing something they feel purposed to be doing, the other stuff becomes doable. Without those factors, a heart can start to lose hope.

I'm afraid of losing hope. Losing ambition and the confidence that anything is possible. That I disappoint my family by not being a lawyer or a doctor or wanting to start a career as soon as I step off the graduation stage.


...

When I titled this blog, it was more about physical perspective. How we tend to look down at our feet to see where we're going and straight ahead but rarely up. True though, that many times that action gives such a view of the seemingly limitless blue that conceals the night's splendour of truly boundlessly expanding stars whose light may reach us though they died ages ago.

It's like this: I'm a small human being. I read on a blog recently that we're akin to a single grain of sand on the shore in view of the universe. Of town, country, continent, ocean to ocean, earth, stars, the milky way, and further than we can map. We just shrink and shrink and shrink. Even our planet is a blip or grain of sand. We can't even comprehend that! At all! And we get so stressed about life so fast- what's the big deal? Seriously. But what else do we have and know?

So here's what I love about life. It can change. Your perspective. Your location. Your sad sack situation  of a relationship you don't want to be in. People say people don't change but I sort of wonder what those people are like. They don't seem like they'd be...well, very fun to hang out with. "Let's go get coffee!" Great, where should we go?" "Are you really asking that? The same place we always go." I think we choose to not change. One of my favourite quotes is, "If you keep doing what you've always done you'll always get what you always got." Closely related to the casual definition of insanity: "Doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result."

“Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously.” 
-Hunter S. Thompson, American journalist. (Who, ironically, committed suicide in 2005 at only 67. Should have taken his own advice. )




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