Highs and Lows

Wedding plans and jetlag - that's what this week has been about. Oh, and a silly little poster called "The Little Chip That Could" which is one of the things I'm working on for the Open House (open to the public!) at work next week. Nothing like squeezing in the highs and the lows right next to each other -- one minute I'm dreaming about my upcoming wedding and a safari in Africa, the next I'm nauseous from lack of sleep and stressing about whether the mouth and the eyes are too low on the little computer chip cartoon I'm drawing. Sad.

One of the reasons I love to travel is for the way it provides the opportunity to reset things. Travel helps you to pull your feet up out of the sand where they have become trapped. It helps you to see things fresh. In some ways it makes you more like a child, more dependent, more aware.

Trips like the one from which I have just returned remind me that I am, much to my dismay, a creature of habit. And, unfortunately, my habits are often bad habits.

For example, I am habitually impatient -- you should see me in my car, or, wait, maybe you shouldn't.

I am habitually glazed over. Like a donut. I don't see and I don't care. Out of habit, I miss the sunrise and the name of the person I just met, the face of that person I just passed on the street (that person? what person? I didn't see a person.)

Also, I am habitually reserved -- I prefer to keep my thoughts to myself, which isn't always bad, I suppose, but it can lead to a greater problem which is habitual laziness. This is a shameful habit.

Another habit of which I am sometimes guilty is pretending that I am a spiritual person when the truth is that I am not. Rather, I am, in reality, only wanting you to think I am a spiritual person, or maybe wishing to myself that I were one. Either way, the truth is that I am often insensitive to spiritual things. When I'm trapped by this habit, I think of God as a nice idea, warm and comforting, like a good genie, and not as a live coal to the lips, fearful, holy. And that's if I think of him at all.

See? That's what traveling can do for you. I'd recommend it, if you're ready for it to mess with your life. Of course, I'd recommend it more if it weren't so expensive. There's always the return to earth and the bills and the dirty dishes. Where were they while I was gone? Couldn't they have stayed away a little longer?

So, anyway, I'm here now, and trying to learn from what I just went through, so that I don't have to learn the same lessons over and over and over again.