Travels

I was thinking about travelling today, and I realized something interesting. I've been travelling a lot lately. It's not for work.. it's for pleasure. But it makes me think a lot about my journeys. As I sit on the train and watch the scenery fly past, I'm reminded of my own life. The beautiful parts sometimes seem to be just flying by me. I am constantly trying to remember all the important moments. I know I'll forget many of them, but everything I do adjusts my course ever so slightly.

I've had the opportunity this week to visit my great aunts in the Toronto area. My grandma and one of my other aunts live out where we are but, she has three more sisters whom I've met, but I've never come here to visit. It was my great Aunt and Uncle's 50th wedding anniversary yesterday and we had a surprise party which had some old photos and videos of my aunts when they were younger, and of my mom being a child, growing into a teenager with some of her cousins. Those are the kind of moments that I try to treasure in my own life. I think my long lasting brush with death helped me to see those moments for what they are. Tiny moments in time, that shape who you grow to be. I don't feel much older than I did when I was a young adult.

It was also a time for me to reflect on the choices that they made in their own lives and how they've affected them. My grandmother is only 2 years older than my Aunt Sally, but she looks a decade older. She gave into old age long before her time, absence of any real exercise and developing type 2 diabetes that she makes no effort to manage have left her barely mobile, unable to take care of herself. It's sad, but a very strong reminder of what difference our attitudes and perception can make in the long run.
I've made the decision to make some serious changes in my lifestyle and diet. Some were easy choices, some were more difficult, and even more difficult to follow through with. But I think these changes will be worth the benefit, slowly but surely, I will fully recover.

New York

I think a lot. Sometimes it gets hard to sort through the confusing stream of consciousness, to come up with some semblance of a real idea. Anyways.. I digress.

The third blog I've missed this year was last week. And I could make many excuses but, really there's no good reason except that I allowed myself to be distracted from my commitments.

I spent five days in New York this past week. Which was so awesome! It was the wedding of one of my classmates from China, and although not all of my other classmates could make it, we had a wonderful half reunion. It was so easy to get back into the groove with them. Hanging out and making jokes for hours. Going to the museum and for walks in central park. On our last night we went bowling. The first game I bombed, but the second game I won. Got into the groove I guess.

The thing I noticed though is how easy it is to get caught back in old habits. And here I'm not talking about training.. those would be good habits for the most part. I'm talking about the negativity that surrounds our class at times in regards to each other, and our time in China. There was a lot of really hard stuff to deal with then but as I look back on it now I see how fortunate I was to be able to spend my days devoted to my training. Then cons of being there certainly don't outweigh the pros, but my classmates and I sometimes stuck ourselves in a cycle of negativity and cynicism. I understand that some people played more of a part in this than others but, at times, we all played our roles.

I love my classmates like brothers and sisters, and there is a bond there that can't be replaced. When you live with someone for 5 years, you have to learn to love one another. I just hope that as time passes, we can let go of that destructive attitude, and learn to be more magnanimous.