I’m not a religious person, and I never have been. I wasn’t brought up that way. But I have gained my own sense of faith through what I have experienced and witnessed and chosen to believe. I don’t know if there is a heaven, but I think it is a beautiful idea. I don’t see it with pearly gates or Saint Peter. I don’t see it set among the clouds in the sky. I see it as a place where you are reunited with those you have lost, a place where you can make up for the time you lost. It is a place comprised of everything you love in life. But more importantly, it is a place where we meet again.
You don’t exist in this world anymore. But that doesn’t mean you don’t exist at all. I will see you in my dreams, and I will see you in my heaven. But not yet. Not just yet.
I don’t want to live in a world where you don’t exist. But I will. There is no choice but to live on.
"Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart. And try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live your questions." Rainer Maria Rilke.
"the fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us." -G. K. Chesterton
I sat in on a global politics lecture on Monday. This doctor/professor who worked with MSF (medecines sans frontieres aka doctors without borders) and was once the president of the organization, named James Orbinski was lecturing. Unfortunately I was only able to catch the end of the lecture, which was a question period. This one kid asked him how what he has seen –i.e. the Rwandan genocide, etc- and all the suffering he has witnessed, has done to change him as a man.I think that was a great question, but he didn’t stop there. But pushed further, asking something along the lines of, “how are we to have compassion and sadness when we haven’t experienced what you have.” I didn’t really think this guy was in line, but in a way I could see where he was coming from. Do we all have to become world renowned doctors and head and found organizations to really make an impact? I liked the way James Orbinski answered the question though; he said that
“my life is just one moment, one flash, one piece of eternity, but I know that what I do and how I interact with others and people around me fundamentally matters, that it changes the world I live in. I have a choice of how –not whether- but how my decisions, my actions, affect my world as a whole. And I recognize that I have a place. I have the ability to respond. And with that I have a responsibility. It’s not a burden; I see it as a challenge, as a joy, as a good thing to know that how I behave will matter. And if I choose to not make a choice I am in fact making a choice. If I choose to not make a choice I am choosing to give away my freedom to do so. This is the best choice I can make with what I have.”
It really struck me, and really stayed with me. I think it’s really about being the best you can be with what you have. But that’s easier said than done.
Cause sometimes in life, we fail far more than we ever thought we would. We fail, we trip, we fall, we land flat on our face. Sometimes we fail more than we succeed; lose more than we win. And when we fail we dig ourselves into these deep holes, where we are left to ruminate in our thoughts and slowly but surely wean farther and farther away from our desired futures. We are human; we are flawed. But this is no excuse to throw in the towel when we lose. Even if failure starts to feel like all we get.Giving up feels so easy. Falling apart is easy. So every day, every day, we have to try. Try to win. Try to succeed. Try to feel optimistic. Even though we have failed in the past, even though we begin to feel like crap, everyday we have to try to be better. We must do this so we don’t live up to the expectations of what it is to simply be ‘human’ –go and give it a new definition. That to be human, one must be extraordinary, not by winning every time, not by succeeding every time they take a risk, but by showing up every day and trying to be better.I think you get to a point where you can’t be ordinary anymore; you can’t stand still. We see these people every day of our lives who lead these lives that we envy –they’ve got the job, the grades, whatever. What I think we need to do is stop looking at them as being the representation of extraordinary, but start looking at ourselves, and trying to find how we can start now, TODAY, not tomorrow, but right this second, to be better. In everything we do; win or lose; succeed or fail. Because we get ourselves into these holes that we dig ourselves, and you start to forget what made you crawl in there in the first place. You forget what really matters, what you really want, and how it’s possible –even now- that you can still get that. I think the first way to be better –something you can do right now, is remembering that you can make your way back from anything.
Natasha Richardson, probably known best for being Liam Neeson's wife and the mom in the Parent Trap (or to the wiser generation, a member of the Redgrave clan) died tonight after a ski accident at Mont Tremblant in Quebec. HOW SAD. Considering a helmet -which she apparently refused to wear- could have saved her life, that's a real pity. I've always liked Liam Neeson; he's a great actor and seems like a pretty cool guy. In one of my favourite movies, he plays a man who's wife has just died, and her 10 year old son, his step son, is desperately in love with a girl at school. He says this to the boy, and I'll just leave it at that:
"Sam, you've got nothin' to lose, and you'll always regret it if you don't! I never told your mom enough. I should have told her everyday because she was perfect everyday"
Yah yah yah, it's been three months. I even surpassed my own expectations. That's a first. My own expectations have seemed to be the headline for consideration and worry in my head lately, maybe for even the past three months. I've been rethinking mostly where it is that I should be next year; should I stay here or go back to Calgary? It's weird...I thought this was a decision I would make only once. I thought when I chose Toronto, I was taking Calgary out of the equation for permanent year long residence for good. Now, seven months later, I'm not so sure. It's been said before that dreams that do come true can be as unsettling as those that don't. I would argue, with more than a hint of pessimism, that this is true more often than not. At least, I think this is true for me. Having 'known' for so long where I wanted to go to school and what I wanted to do with my life, there is a considerable amount of build up and expectations that follows you around, that remains in the back of your mind. I think we throw ourselves into these dreams; we make them larger than life. We let them hold all the answers, and in our minds one event will just lead to the other, and the life we've always wanted will unfold infront of our eyes. Go to this city, go to this school, take this program, don't fail that class, forget about your creature comforts, keep looking ahead, keep going. I wish, I really wish, I could be like completely. In a way I have been, but my problem is that I keep looking back. It's like I'm driving away from a place, onto to the next thing, always looking in the rear view mirror. Everything that's coming at me I miss. The point is, what's familiar and old isn't always necessarily better. I have a hard time wrapping my head around that. I always have. If I were to leave here, I would miss this place. I would miss the view, the walk down university, the empty subways, the restuarants, the variety, the water. There is a reason why I will always love this place, and I haven't forgotten that. I was mad for a while, and maybe I still am to a degree, that this wasn't everything I wanted it to be. It didn't meet my expectations -but I think that's the problem. I'm not as malleable -and neither are my expectations- as I think I should be. What bothers me is that I think I've gotten used to sub-par. I think I've gotten used to my experiences falling below my expectations, because I view things that haven't fit my mold as a failure rather than a learning experience. It's quite narrow minded of my. More than that though, I think I'm afraid of really putting myself out there, really walking a thin line and teetering on the edge, to be really successful in what I want. Cause when you're that far out, you've got a long way to fall. And the problem is that I don't see myself avoiding that fall; I don't see myself with the capacity to not look down and just look ahead. I've got a lot more to mull over, but I think at least one thing has become clear. Whether I leave Toronto, go to Calgary, or stay here, whatever I'm trying to get away from won't go away no matter what I do. When I stop running I will still be faced with myself, and I think that's where the real progress needs to be made. Over these past seven months, over my past 18 years, I've had some really, really incredible moments. They are the kind of moments that make you blink a couple times just to make sure that it's real; where you adjust your focus to make sure you're taking it all in, that everything is saved to memory. I've also had my share of bad moments, where I just wanted to crawl under the covers. But it was those great moments when clarity was most prominent, and I fully believed in my situation and where I was headed. Moments pass, but there will always be more of them. When I'm on that road now, headed to the next thing, I know I can't keep looking behind me.Because in order for my moments of clarity to become hours, and hours to become days, and days to become my life, I just need to keep going.
