When life gets complicated…

Script from an actual conversation I recently had (inadvertently) with a few friends.

Friend 1: "So, what are you going to do?"

Friend 2: "I'll have to do something different... I want it to be.. be... more like... I have to start thinking out-of-the-box like Jackie"

Jackie: "What box?"
;)

Source: http://www.fromupnorth.com/2011/03/various-quotations-222/

Finishing your PhD is hard work; you spend a great deal of time swimming around in your head, trying not to drown in your thoughts. I’m not sure how successful I have been with this lately. But what’s for certain is that I’m not blogging about it, cause it's been a while since we last chatted, eh. :) I love what I do. I love gibbons. LOVE.THEM. But not every part of doing what you love is that wonderful. Sometimes it can be grueling getting from point A (blissful life in the forest) to point B (back to blissful life in the forest).

As many of you know, I haven’t always been a fan of living where I am now. It’s not that there is anything truly wrong with this place, it just isn’t for me. I don’t fit in here. But more significantly, because I get down about how I don’t fit in here, I lose my sense of self and this bums me out.

When I returned from Thailand and decided to go back to campus to finish writing my PhD, many people who care about me warned that going back was a bad idea. But I felt very strongly it was something I had to do. It was something I needed to prove to myself, I think. Prove that I could get through it; that I was strong enough to survive discomfort, isolation; the anxiety of grad school. In many ways, living here is more isolating and uncomfortable then leaving for the other side of the world. Maybe it’s because the strange and new carries with it the exotic appeal of adventure, but living in a familiar, yet slightly different place (between Canada and America), creates unsettling tension of things being just “slightly off” in an prickly way. At least to the point where you can’t just brush off the weirdness with the soothing self talk of “well, they just do things differently here.”

A few months ago, when I was most dejected from obstacles with my work and living here again, a friend of mine kicked me in the pants (figuratively) with a jolting comment: “You’re always talking about compassion and kindness, but you aren’t being very compassionate right now. Everyone always hates on America, it gets pretty old after a while.” This launched me into a reactive lecture on all the good things that this country does for the world, simply just to uphold my honour, I think, since my feelings were hurt by not living up to my own standards. But I really do believe in all those things I said.

The thing is: There is good everywhere.

Everywhere.

But sometimes we get so absorbed in our own drama; we end up drowning in the lake looking for water.

My daily runs (aka: the only time I leave the house and stop working on my dissertation) have never been the same since that conversation. People are nicer when I pass them on the trails. Turns out the sun is just as beautiful here in the mornings as it is in Canada (shockingly). Some of the trees here even look like the ones I stared at day in and day out with the gibbons and macaques in the rainforest. Odd how I never noticed that before.

Looking at the similarities and differences in life is a fine balance. Peer too far in either direction and it can throw you off track, sometimes without you evening knowing it.

I still don’t fit in here. But I’m learning how to be myself wherever I go. And that’s the whole point of why I came back, even though I didn’t fully understand that on my 12 hour drive south from the border back in January.

So, can I check this off as a mission accomplished? Never. As always, this is just life in progress.

What lessons have you learned recently?
I hope you're all still working on finding the interconnectedness of life.

Source: http://www.fromupnorth.com/2011/03/various-quotations-222/

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