The American Runner

I ran. I ran until my muscles burned and my veins pumped battery acid. Then I ran some more. 

--Tyler Durden, Fight Club

This whole moving at 90 MPH thing is getting old. Don't get me wrong--I do enjoy being busy. But when you have little to no time to yourself or to spend with your friends or to dabble in your hobbies, it's not so fun anymore.

I finally was able to meet up with my good friend Suzanne last night after not seeing her for about four months. She and I discussed how much it bothers us that we have to schedule each other in to our days...It's awful and frankly, I don't think life is meant to be this way.

So how is it meant to be? There is no white space left in my agenda book for weeks, and I hate it. Why do I do this to myself? How did things get this hectic? And more importantly, how do I change it all? I think this is the way a lot of Americans live their lives. The glorified idea of productivity is embedded in our culture; we thrive off of so-called productive days, and yet so may of us are unhappy, agitated, or simply feeling less than satisfied. 

It's so easy to catch this American Runner's Disease that has spread among our people. We sprint both mentally and physically from one task, one location to the next; the fast-paced lifestyle is no longer the exception but the rule. Is it not true that anything which doesn't go at lightning speed seems to piss us off? Slow drivers, slow service, the elderly....We have no tolerance for that which doesn't keep up with us, and we often don't see anything wrong with expressing our dissatisfaction. 

It's all rather unsettling....but I guess it all comes down to making choices and compromising. Perhaps we must all learn to choose what we "should" do a little less often and rule in favor of what we want and need a little more often. 

We and They

--By Rudyard Kipling

Father, Mother and Me
    Sister and Auntie say
All the people like us are We,
    And every one else is They.
And They live over the sea,
    While We live over the way,
But--would you believe it?--They look upon We
    As only a sort of They!

We eat pork and beef
    With cow-horn-handled knives.
They who gobble Their rice off a leaf,
    Are horrified out of Their lives;
And They who live up a tree,
    And feast on grubs and clay,
(Isn't it scandalous?) look upon We
    As a simply disgusting They!

We shoot birds with a gun.
    They stick lions with spears.
Their full-dress is un-.
    We dress up to Our ears.
They like Their friends for Tea.
    We like Our friends to stay;
And after all that, They look upon We
    As an utterly ignorant They!

We eat kitcheny food,
    We have doors that latch.
They drink milk or blood,
    Under an open thatch.
We have Doctors to fee.
    They have Wizards to pay.
And (impudent heathens!) They look upon We
    As a quite impossible They!

All good people agree,
    And all good people say,
All nice people, like Us, are We
    And every one else is They;
But if you cross over the sea,
    Instead of over the way,
You may end up (think of it!) looking on We
    As only a sort of They!

Ants in My Pants

I'm sitting in the library and I just can't concentrate. Everyone says education is important, and I know they're right. But that's such a broad statement. Education. What exactly is education? What is worth learning about, and what isn't? I have such a hard time sitting here reading Shakespeare when there is so much else to be done.

My heart is not in my schoolwork. It is in Aid to South Africa; yoga; and it is abroad. It is in all of the other activities I currently find more merit in than analyzing Shakespeare's writing. I have this constant sense of agitation when I am not focusing on my work in ASA. I want to be where my heart is, all day, everyday. Spending my time buried in books is not what education is all about to me. I want to be out in the world experiencing it, not reading about it, analyzing it from afar. I have been itching for years to make my life about action, not idle longing. Well, that itch has increased to a full-blown uncontainable need. I just can't sit here anymore.

And yet I know I have 8 months of this left before I can start putting my energies elsewhere....exactly where that is right now, I'm not quite sure. I have dreams of picking up and moving out West to be among the mountains that captured my heart long ago, but I also have thoughts of remaining in West Chester because it would be nice to be in one place for awhile.

But who the hell knows? I sure don't. All I know is my body is gearing up to run, a sensation that has became ever-so-familiar over time. I've gotta let my spirit go and see where it leads me. I'll crack down and finish this work like I always do, but I refuse to ignore the part of me that knows there's something more...

The Pleaser

I can't remember the last time I wrote a poem...feels good to get back to it. I wrote this one for my CRW301 Into. to Poetry class, and although it would normally take me days to complete a poem when I used to write poetry, I banged this one out in a few hours. I guess after a few years there is plenty to catch up on...

The Pleaser  

I barely catch my breath

Before running to the next

Got the same ol’ smile

In place, no space for failure

No space for error

I’m movin’, groovin’

To the beat you set for me

I’m yours entirely

Got no time to be mine,

Runnin’ through this world defined

Every day I say,

Tomorrow will be new,

Tomorrow will be different

Yet each daybreak looks the same

Will I ever have it change?

Awake My Soul

"The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you 

Don’t go back to sleep. 

You must ask for what you really want

Don’t go back to sleep. 

People are going back and forth across the doorsill 

where the two worlds touch. 

The door is round and open

Don’t go back to sleep.”

--Rumi

It's hard to believe that I have been in the states for 9 days now. I'm still in quite a daze to say the least because of how quickly everything happened: I returned to Long Island the night of Friday, August 26 just to find out that my family and I needed to evacuate our home because of Hurricane Irene; after relocating to my grandmother's home a town over from mine on Saturday, August 27 (everything turned out fine and it was thankfully not as bad as the forecasters predicted) I drove the 3 hours to West Chester on Monday morning, moved in to my new apartment, and began classes less than 5 hours later...Whew!  What a crazy first week back; I still can't believe I'm finally back home. I'm not sure if my time went slowly or quickly, but either way it's crazy to think that just a week and a half ago, I was more than 2,000 miles away living with a Costa Rican family and speaking another language.

But because I have been wandering through these past 9 days tiredly and with an absent mind, and after taking time to reflect upon what my daily activities have consisted of since my return, I've realized that I have unfortunately fallen right back into the same bad habits I had hoped to change by altering my environment; a.e. eating unhealthy food, sleeping too much, not making time to exercise, etc. Granted, I was unaware that I had reverted back to my old habits since I've been jumping from one task to the next, but still I am now thinking to myself, "Are you kidding me? WAKE UP!" The whole point of my trip to Costa Rica was to gain new perspective and to better myself in any way possible. So how could I immediately allow myself to return to a lifestyle I desperately wanted to change?

The key here is awareness: once you have it, don't let yourself lose it. As Rumi says, stay awake with enlightenment; don't go back to sleep with ignorance. When we are lucky enough to have an experience that teaches us some lesson, we cannot allow ourselves to think that learning the lesson is enough, because it's not. We must then apply what we have learned to our lives or else all that we have learned will be lost.  

My time in Costa Rica was relatively well spent and offered me countless valuable lessons including lessons about daily living and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. I now have the opportunity to apply all that I learned to my daily life here in West Chester, PA. Why would I not seize this brilliant opportunity?...I have no answer to this question except that it's easier said than done. But that's not enough to stop me from making the quality of my life better because I know the hard work will be worth it. 

So I'm gonna go with Rumi on this one and say there will be no more sleeping for me...Life has too much to offer for me to sleep through it.