**Note: So I'm a little delayed in posting this. My apologies...it was last Thursday. The picture is the label from a bakery in Virginia. Hi-larious.
I am writing this while at school since I have a large break in between classes today. I just moved outside because the dungeon-esque interior of the cafeteria was not only dark but noisy as well. It's cold but it is a stunning day. The sky is incredibly blue and the smattering of cotton ball clouds seem to the take the shape of leviathan sea creatures frolicking around in a giant aquarium above our heads. I wore a skirt out of shear boredom with my jeans and if the sun weren't out I'd have frozen to my chair by now. It's the season for those snowy blossomed trees to bloom and being so high up I can see the circle of mountains that surround and they are so beautiful. People who hate L.A. are seriously disturbed. I'm sipping on two different coffees, one hot and one cold. I'll probably regret both of them midway through my 2hr and 25min class.
There is a great organization that my school called my attention to called Volunteers for Peace (vfp.org) It's for anyone who wants to go anywhere (almost) for 2 to 3 weeks to volunteer. The key selling point is how cheap it is. $300 covers almost everything, you just have to get yourself there. The best part about it is that there is something for everyone. If you want to work with orphans in India, handicapped people in Turkey, at a monastery in Switzerland, or at an archaeological dig in France...you can! I am seriously contemplating one of the India gigs. I'm not sure when I'll be able to make time for it but I feel compelled to go do something that involves more of me than just my checkbook. I don't grow or learn anything about myself by giving money. Worse even is that it's deducted from my checking account every month so I don't even have to do the act of making an effort every month. Oh, and if you don't know what I'm talking about, I support 2 kids in India through Compassion.com, as do a few of my friends. Just because it's not hands-on doesn't mean its not doing good, I just want to do more. Mostly because it scares me to death. It's my general philosophy that if something scares me (barring anything truly asinine) I should probably jump into it. If we only did things we were comfortable doing we'd never do anything because it's our nature to create the most comfortable environment possible. Our culture is so strange. We require kids to learn learn learn. Then once adulthood is reached its sort of taboo to not know what you're doing. Since when did it become a source of shame to say 'I don't know.' It's the 'I don't know' regions that become our unexplored territory. The place where the heart of the adventurer in all of us longs to go. If we know everything then whats the point? One of my professors asked us if we thought that all of the great discoveries had been made. I say no, but there is less obvious unexplored territory so many of us just accept how things are and try to fit ourselves in between all of the bits of life that have already been defined. one example is the interior of the earth. I had no idea, before I had to suffer through Geography, that we have no real concrete proof of what we are all walking around on. The genius method of constructing what we think we know is from recorded shock waves that get sent back to us whenever there's an earthquake. Different soundings supposedly represent different densities. Those waves could be bouncing off mountain-sized dinosaurs for all we know. Unlikely, but there was a point where people seriously believed the world was flat....it's all about historical perspective really.
One of my classes has been making me ponder how much our sight handicaps us. We rely heavily on our ability to see, to the detriment of our other senses. All of our issues with race pretty much come from our deficiency in looking past someones skin or hair color, etc. If we couldn't see then all that would exist is touch, smell, taste, and hearing. We'd be grouped into beings by those who can speak, how well we speak, what language....I suppose we'd find someway to discriminate sight or no sight. However we really need to start looking past our vision to see things a little more deeply. Even if we get past our pre-fab ideas about how someone looks will we really hear them because we're already too busy categorizing them somehow. Sight also hinders the idea of faith. We cannot see someone's energy, or God, or whatever. If we can't see it we can't believe it...it makes no sense. We rely so much on instinct or sensing energy without even realizing it. What makes us know when we're in danger, or being stared at, or when someone is interested in us, or the idea of 'gay-dar.' I'm not joking. Sometimes there's something almost tangible that you sense from another person. I feel you can get more and more attuned to these things if you just stop seeing so much with your eyes and start 'seeing' in other ways.
So, as you can see...I was on a roll, a blog roll, if you will. I actually had to work this weekend so it's now the next week already and 1am Tuesday to boot. Where does the time go? I have had writers block in regards to anything important. Maybe all my writing energy is being taken up by the masses of writing I have to do for my classes each week. It's annoying. That just means I need to step it up a bit. Focus. That is so hard to do. I dare not even whisper it but...I think tv is standing in my way. Which is dumb considering I have a DVR. I think if I forbid myself tv for the week I'd be amazed at all I'd get done. When I read this tomorrow I'll probably declare myself insane but it's late.
No comments:
Post a Comment