vessels

Today I stared longingly at a picture of a far-away beach and sincerely missed my life in other parts of the world. Myself in other parts of the world.

I intended to come home and continue my life as it had come to be. Physical, healthy, simple. Daily groceries and exercise, reading good books, being in the presence of people without negativity.

Full.

I'm so conscious of negativity in conversations lately. I feel I'm absorbing it. Like the North American Fast Life culture I'd done so well to get rid of. We don't laugh enough. I don't do something every day here that I love, but instead battle to make myself do things I don't love but feel obligated to do. And I can feel the happiness that comes from living a certain way eroding.

It's like I'm trying to fill something that isn't empty.

In the past few months I came to peace with the inevitability of the world. [The ice caps are melting? The comet is coming? The nukes are primed? The air is cancer?] By freeing myself to not be obliged to save it yet holding myself responsible in each day to not contribute to it, things got better. Eliminating the thought that what I did was so big and important that I should view my life as a supreme sacrifice and myself as a martyr. Placing myself in a context of responsibility and reality, thus power, to do more that actually counted than the floundering supposing that something might count. Sleeping without the insecurity that someone would discover the game and bust up the charade and I would be out of a project before I knew what the project was.

All around me I see insecurities driving people, driving conversations, driving negativity in and out like horrible horrible breath. Things for the self, like careful food and activity, are luxury instead of expectation. A friend of mine fell on his sword last week and destroyed his career, he hasn't come out of his room in two weeks - a roommate of some other friends - in what we can only determine was a fit of insanity, a toppling of the tower. From here, I can see what did it.

Tomorrow, I get to try again.