mortality.

Life is picking up speed. Yet again.

I laid tonight in the grass. The neighbor's cat came to greet me, and we spent time loving on one another. The trees gave me company as I got lost in my thoughts.

A week from now I will be in Uganda. A land I have dreamed of for years.
Two days from now, fifty of my new friends will be on the road. A life I love and whose challenges I miss. They will be engulfed in the beauty it offers.
Two days ago, my sister suffered. And I wasn't there to comfort her.

I am trying to grasp the responsibility and privileges of life. What it means to know something and to act on it. That choice determines not only what you believe, but who you are and who you are becoming.

I am realizing how easy it is for me to be good in the company of my friends. They are good. So so good. When they are engulfed in beauty, it catches on. And it's wonderful. But it makes me think of our origins .. would I be this me if I were living somewhere else?

And I am starting to feel again. I am realizing that a lot of times I block out emotion. I get lost in other people's stories. I try to forget myself so I don't have to deal. But I am getting attached to people again .. and they are leaving again. All the more reason for me to continue my cycle of arm's distance relationships. I am battling with myself .. trying to convince my heart to be vulnerable.

It's not that I lose faith in people. It's not that I desire so much to be loved. All do, but that isn't quite it.

It's that fear. That fear that I have let rule my life for all 22 years of it. People scare me, because once I let them in, there's no getting out of it. And if I open up and am ignored .. I shrink a little back into myself. It's happened all too often, in tiny, little ways. No one's fault, but I need to grow out of it.

I need to grow out of me.

I am hoping that the next few weeks will help me break into my stride of independency. International travel, taking on a huge, unknowing project, and standing up to greet who I am becoming. I think it will be good.

I am facing mortality. Realizing life is meant to be lived. And I am constantly rediscovering that I have no idea what that truly means.

Here is a favorite quote from Steinbeck that I find particularly relevant. It has been on my mind ever since I read it a couple of weeks ago.

"It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.

We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is."

Remember mortality. Let it bring life.

As a friend has put it, "What more than is there but love? Love is everything. Teach me to be love. Make it all that I am."

Jesus, world, friends ...
... teach me to be love. Make it all that I am.

I could go on writing forever .. my mind is reeling and I am afraid it will all come spilling over. Just in time to be filled with .. Africa.

[may i never be the same again.]
k.