Monday, February 7, 2011

This is what it is.

"Adventure is a path. Real adventure – self-determined, self-motivated, often risky – forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world. The world the way it is, not the way you imagine it. Your body will collide with the earth and you will bear witness. In this way you will be compelled to grapple with the limitless kindness and bottomless cruelty of humankind – and perhaps realize that you yourself are capable of both. This will change you. Nothing will ever again be black-and-white.” - Mark Jenkins



Most people don't understand exchange one bit. It something that can't be put into words, and it can't be touched. It's the feeling that, wherever you go, you have something in common and something to talk about with the most unlikely people. It's an overwhelming gratitude for everything you know and love, and a desire to have it all at once, while all you really have is about 50 pounds of clothes and your iPod. But you know you're the luckiest person alive because of the flashes of understanding that come out of the blue when you're on the bus coming home from school, or at lunch with people you can't really call your friends, but you know they will be soon enough.
It's the way you take a walk by yourself and you realize that you can be alone, that it's okay to be thousands of miles away from everything you know and still be perfectly happy and at home. You shatter stereotypes and ways of thinking, and you learn to smile, look at things differently and then join in with the strange things that are going on around you. You learn to use what you have, and how to get what you need. You learn that others can help when you can't help yourself--and I suppose that's a part of growing up. Everything comes into focus when your circumstances change.
You have good days, and bad ones. But you realize that only YOU can make a day a certain way. If you really want to have a good day, make it one
And you know you can do anything, because you're doing this

2 comments:

  1. this post sums up how I feel right now! I might just quote y ou on soem of those sentences in my next post, if you odn't mind =)

    ReplyDelete