Duh

[thefuriouscynic]

You'd think that someone who has moved once across Canada and then again across the Atlantic Ocean in under three years would at least be aware of the self-evident wisdom I'm about to vomit here, but APPARENTLY NO. It took bouncing out of bed this morning and thinking, "Hurray, a new day!" and running through a mental list of all the pleasurable

Comments

Re: we shoud SO get e-

[thefuriouscynic]

No, I totally agree, and I had a few things related to you in the back of my mind when I wrote this (both that I was quite miserable in Vancouver after you, Lindsay, and Brock left, and your own move to Seattle). I think that all of those mundane qualities that somehow end up 'shining through', however, are brought to light when people from 'that place' step into your life and you're suddenly like, "Ah, so this is the real landscape." For me, it's the people who really comprise those little 'mundane' essential qualities, because you realize that they aren't particular to the space and could be anywhere, but that THIS place would be nothing without them. Minimal difference, blah blah blah!

I'm dealing with some similar (albeit grossly simiplified) issues re: adventure from some of my undergrads, who are in the appropriate stages of "oh shit my future" panic and come to visit me for advice. I hear the "I guess I'll go to grad school because I want to have adventures in new and exciting places" line a lot, which just makes me say, "Then travel!" To which the implied reply they always dance around but can never properly articulate is, "But there's no dignity in just travelling - there's dignity in going someplace for a practical reason." To which I think, "There's no dignity in being terrified and alone and mourning your practical life choices millions of miles from anyone who could give a shit, either." But I don't say that last bit.

I think that one of the reasons I had issues here (and in Vancouver, although it wasn't as pronounced there) for so long was because I couldn't find a site in which to reconcile similarities and differences. When I first moved here, I was shocked that everything was so different. To deal with it, I regarded everything as incredibly exotic, which 'allowed' it to be different. Then all the similarities bothered me. It wasn't until I started looking at things from the perspective of ordinary, stupid human idiosyncrasies that I stopped being surprised and, like you mentioned, could just be ordinarily, stupidly happy.