So what did you learn in Argentina? Well....

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Five months of travel, adventure, and conversation. I am now starting preparing myself for what life will bring when I go home to Colorado. There have been an innumerable amount of beautiful people met and lessons learned. I am standing, once again, on the edge of plunging in to another enormous change in my life. Staring into the future everything appears to be up in the air, floating out in space and I am staring off into unseen ground. How will all of these lessons be translated into a completely different context for my life? How will my style of life at home be blended into my new style of life in Buenos Aires? It all remains murky, opaque, an image lacking clarity like staring through a dirty window. The mystery is scintillating, I relish in it, because I know that wherever I go, and whatever form my life takes on next will be wonderful. I have faith in what will come, something that I gained down here. But certainly something profoundly different from what I once believed. An indescribable transformation has taken place in my life, through all vectors of my brain. This metamorphosis is much more profound than any one could have ever prepared me for. This blog is written in hopes to share these things that I have learned. Some are quite cathartic but it’s the true tale of what happened to me in my time in Argentina.
Upon leaving Colorado I left a vast web of friends and family that knew me extremely well, having precedents to who I am, how I react to certain things, and so on. These sorts of things are completely natural and there is by no means anything wrong with them. But I played into the image that people had of me, acting essential, to try and maintain my perception in everyone’s mind. I was a grand character in the script of a movie, my movie, not intentionally but subliminally. When I arrived in Argentina I was unprecedented, no one knew who I was. My image, reputation, was a blank sheet of paper and I was the artist with a pen and ink well standing over the desk ready to create. Standing free of who I thought I was, I allowed myself to simply be. I took off the costume of an actor and just let the light shine through me, radiating out. This was a liberating feeling that I held onto the entire time I was down here. The phrase “unencumbered man” rose in my head all the time, transcending my Colorado image and creating as I traveled. It interests me how my new personal self image with change when I get back to Colorado. I am going to be as dynamic as I can be, continue to live with this fluid perception of my self, ever changing, out front, but grounded.
What have I become grounded in, some might ask? Well there are a couple of phrases, mantras, prayers, what have you that I have grounded my self to while I have been down here. The phrase “I don’t know what’s good” has been repeated day after day and have been a shifting force in my life. The idea behind it is that I don’t have power to look into the future and make value judgments about my current situation. That what is happening now is leading to something mysterious out in the future and I only need to have faith that what is coming. It has kept me happy even when things take an unexpected turn, kept me in the moment and looking at the present positively. I have said before that the key to happiness is to be a friend of the present moment, and this has been the phrase to keep me there, looking forward with an open flexible view of the world.
That leads to flexibility, which has come from this idea of “I don’t know what’s good” This is the tenant of my life that has evolved into a prethought form out of “I don’t know what’s good.” No longer do I have to be constantly reminding myself of my keystone phrase. I have used it so much that my thoughts flow in that form of thought more often than not. It is a new higher speed by-pass to make the transport of thoughts more efficient than the old pot-holed two laner. There is this respect for the grand order of things controlled by some mysterious power (I can not yet name this power, God? The Source? Words seem too finite to describe it). Without flexibility, malleability, life plays out of as a series of small disasters, because the world hardly ever works out the way that we expect it to. These disasters, if looked at from a different perspective can actually be little miracles and the only real change needs to be my expectations for the future. To be devoid of firm expectations allows me to flow down the river of life and not paddle up stream, straining and screaming all the way.
Continuing in the same vein is the lesson that the universe is something that conspires to help you achieve your life’s desires. There is some benevolent force out there in the world that is connecting all the threads that run through our lives. For me life isn’t just a series of coincidences there is something more powerful behind all it. I think the mystery gets spread too thin in our society, it is easy just to think that something happened out of blind luck or chance. There is definitely something that is lightly directing my path, leading me into things that guides my evolution as a person. Things that would simply be written off by coincidence to some people fill me with wonder and joy about the way these things are brought together. I am not sure if this leading force is an external deity, as I believed when I was younger, or if it is something that is inherent in every person on the planet. But I am sure that there is something there, and following its gentle direction over the last five months has been both rewarding and challenging. I have found my faith again, I once again believe in what the future holds, something that had been gone for the last 2 years of my life.
As I came down here one of my goals for the trip was to expand my worldview, to switch from a zoom lens to a wide-angle lens of how I view the world. There was a complete shift in my view of the world, from looking at a map of the United States to stepping back and viewing the globe, spinning it on my index finger. One thing that I will take away from this trip is more balanced worldview. For one I have realized increasingly that all of our believes, religions, cultures, are all pointing to the same thing. That the context for someone’s life shapes the way they view the world and I am not in a position to place judgment on the way other people live. There are so many different ways to achieve happiness in this world and it varies from person to person. All I can do, personally, is try to better my life; the changes first need to come in my heart. Also with that comes a personal responsibility be open about the way I view other people’s lives. Through this opening of my conception of “the good life” I have been exposed to the variety of paths that I can take in my own life. My life is NOT on a straight time line of school, marriage, work, retirement. That all sounds good to me now, but there are many different modes of achieving these goals. I now have the courage to leave home and delve into a strange place and I know that I can flourish. But as I have said above I have faith in what the silent weaver of my life has in store for me and all I can do is greet my life’s path with open arms and awareness that these things are far from my control.
The final thing I am going to harp on publicly, I am sorry if it sounds like I am using this blog to preach, if that is being felt it is completely unintentional. I have renewed value for everything that I have at home. Sometimes familiarity can blind us. It is like an old piece of silver that has gathered the grime of familiarity over the years and my experience down here has polished it. There are so many things that I have at home, I am so blessed that home is not a bad place. I live in the most beautiful state, with a caring tight knit family, and have a great group of friends. There aren’t many people who live the life that I do back in Colorado and I need to cherish every moment of it, revel in it, because it may not be there forever. I am coming back home with a fire burning inside, continuing with the phrase that has been mounted on my wall and previously mentioned, “Go Forth and Set the World on Fire.” I plan to come home and take advantage of all I have in Colorado with a completely new value system. I hope all of you are ready to come with me.
I am running out of steam on this one, and anything else now seems to be labored and long winded. I am on my last 2 hours in Buenos Aires and sick with a head cold. There is this strange sinking feeling in my stomach, like falling backward. I am falling back into my life state side. There are countless things that I am going to miss about Buenos Aires, but again there are countless things that I am looking forward to at home. Like the law of probability it will all even out eventually. My hope now is to look back on this study abroad without a shred of regret or discontent. I did everything that I was supposed to and anything that I feel that I missed out on has been put on my to do list for next time. I can’t wait to see all of my faithful readers back at home and hopefully be able to share some of my stories with you, face-to-face, one to one. Because at times I feel like my writing just doesn’t to it justice. Thank you to everyone who has kept up reading the blog, it has been an amazing way of processing all of this input and allowing me to create some output, balance is always necessary. Look forward to 1 or 2 more blogs about my trip to Jujuy and Satla, which was really the pinnacle of everything, throughout the summer. I just didn’t think I had the proper time to detail the whole trip in the crazy weeks I have been back in the city. Finally a world of thanks need to, once again, be showered upon my lovely family and parents for opening the doors that lead me to this life changing experience.
See you all very soon,
Patrick

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