Coming to a Conclusion

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As I am ending my 9th week of this quarter (10th week is the last week) I find myself reflecting on all the things that have happened recently and how I have in subtle ways begun to change. My study of Mongolian women inspired feelings of immense guilt and a sense of self-loathing has hung over me like the grey Washington sky of winter. But as the weather has begun to cheer, I find myself peeling away layers of unhappiness and confusion, revealing tender pieces of my new skin. This new skin is still fragile and thin but it is the skin of a greater understanding. Convincing myself that I do not have to "be" the ugly american that I have come to hate so much and that nothing cultural is ever black and white. Is it fair for me to romanticize other cultures and communities while criticizing and demoralizing my own? One of my co-workers had an excellent point about studying abroad and why he chose to return to the US after spending 2 weeks vagabonding through Europe... he said that he came back because he knew this was where he could enact the most change and the first part of this change was returning to education. I have a lot of respect for that perspective and I think I've begun to temper my own with shades of grey. Not everything has to make sense and as I hold ideas up to the sunlight, I am beginning to see new creases and variences that I could not see in shadow. Life is not simple but it is simple too. We choose our own complexity and our world views do not have to be our self views or even our views of other individuals. Perspective can be fluid and it is only when we force ourselves to adhere to rigid conceptions of past experience and future forecast that we do ourselves a great disservice. We eliminate the want for change and the excitement of unknown. We convince ourselves that if we cannot plan our next week that we must be truly disorganized and doomed to the failure of wandering. But if there is no real "destination" then isn't wandering all that we have? This has been a strange and sometimes unnerving experience but I think that concluding with a trip to the utter unknown will be the cementing element to this year of self-discovery and question.

Here's to us all.

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Comments

[Rupert]

Cheers
I'll drink to that!