My Soul is Hungry

France, India, Tunisia?  India, Pakistan, France, Tunisia?  Syria, Jordan, Israel?? 

The permutations swirl and flight shopping is my drug.  A quick search of flight possibilities on the internets brings at least temporary relief from the - is it restlessness?

As I explained to the Swiss Contingent earlier this morning, The East-West cultural divide is a big one, each resting at opposite ends of a vast spectrum of philosophies and viewpoints.  After thirty years of viewing the world from one extreme, my soul craves balance.  And it's not enough for me to take a yoga class or teach survival English to immigrants.  I need to be the immigrant.  I need complete immersion and the East is my swan song.  

Since I became aware of it in 2001, my soul has shown a strong and consistent enthusiasm for jumping right into the fire.  Immersion is my proven strategy; a hyper-efficient method for learning, if not always a comfortable, easy or fun approach.   The immersion strategy is about incentive structures, and necessity is the mother of all incentives.  A starving person is motivated to eat all manner of things.

It's sad that the concept of necessity has been so twisted and manipulated in our western societies.  What would happen to our economy if we didn't need - and consume - so much?

If and when I ever suffer from something like hunger pangs, then maybe I will have an idea of what it is to be in need.  Until then it remains for me an abstract concept only, and my leisurely contemplation of it just another privilege of my western roots...

But I digress.

Lucky for me, my many guardian angels have decided to take action and help me rein in the madness.  Tomorrow is my first day of painting daycare in the suburbs, where I will live and work for at least one month.   It's everything I needed and more; a comfortable place to stay with good people and a good family environment with plenty of nature and daily physical labor to ease the juggernaut in my head.  It's almost like I am being rewarded for something, a bit of encouragement for being on the right track.  An opportunity to relax a bit and put the endless ideas on the back burner.

One thing I adore about my life is that with so many doors open - and new ones opening all the time - it's impossible to guess where I might be or what I might do in the near future.  It's a real-life choose-your-own-adventure series.  Chapter three.

until the next time,

your eternally optimistic ambassador in training,

LMA