Turning Leaves

If you would attain to what you are not yet, you must always be displeased by what you are. For where you are pleased with yourself there you have remained. Keep adding, keep walking, keep advancing.

~Saint Augustine

You know that feeling when the number of things you have to do hits a critical point, and you suddenly are unable to accomplish anything. I'd guess that it's a pretty familiar feeling, having seen piles of dishes in the many kitchens I've been in and an at least equal number of blogs with angsty entries about how impossible their life outlooks appear. It's a defining characteristic of humanity to never quite live up to our potential, this being made mathematically impossible, as the number of your accomplishments grow, so do your possibilities of future goals. But why do only a few of us manage to anything really worthwhile, meaning that so many of us have yearning and regret when possibilities slide out of reach because of inaction or inattentivenness. How many of us wish we had different jobs, more time to spend with our families, taken better care of their bones and a host of other seemingly avoidable problems that we encounter. We seem to have sacrficed our happiness and well-being on goals that others have said are worth pursuing. I guess what concerns me is how few of us really take responsibility for who we are as people. We remove responsibilty by making assumptions about ourselves, about our limitations and capabalitiesl, deciding arbitrarily (there's no way I can apply myself enough to deal with this, or, how can I pay attention, or I don't have the time, patience or money. Most of the most memorable people in recorded history are those that have taken actual responsibility, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Jesus Christ, to name a few. People that ultimately preached that we should think for ourselves, who we praised and glorified as wonderful people, but never once took to how their messages are applicable to each and every one of us. Maybe there's some evolutionary flaw that decides that only a few would ever be able to do that, which basically means that there will always need to be leaders and followers and will mean that communism can never work. Not until the majority of people start to think and decide for themselves. But, the world still goes on, and if one is going to accept himself as he is, he must also accept the reality he lives in.

Canadian Living

Being back in Canada, after half a year in Latin America, would definitely rank up as one of the more difficult experiences in my life. It makes the acculturation when I first started my travels seem so short and easy to deal with. Most of us have already been bombarded with how stressful and busy our lives are and how unhealthy that probably is. Well, for me, it's far worse than most can imagine. We're basically killing ourselves with our guidelines, standards, expectations, achievements, success, schedules, processes, instantaneous, deadlined, institunionalized, "healthy", low-cholestrol, trans-fat free lifestyles. And with that, I'm sure many people are going to discredit this, after all, it's hard to be critical of ourselves, which is basically what travel forces us to do if we undertake it with any kind of seriousness. We all have problems, we all make mistakes, but they're always so much easier to notice in other people than in ourselves. It seems to me too that this is largely because we fail to accept our problems as a part of our realities.