Five Days

I had intended to write something yesterday, which would have marked one week until my departure. Turns out preparing to leave the country for a year can be a little hectic, so I have had not the time to write about my various preparations. Finally, after a very productive day running around and gathering some final important items (new glasses, book on shanghai, mandarin basics book, alarm clock etc.) I am sitting quietly in my room and trying to gather some of the thoughts that have been pulsing through my brain . . . 

I am feeling, more than ever, that time is completely out of my hands. I can neither speed the clock up, nor slow it down. I can only sit, and enjoy the moments as they pass - attempting to grasp in each of these passing moments some authenticity in my existence. 

Currently, I feel a little like those coin machines at science museums -- the ones where you put a penny in the chute, and it spirals down toward a tiny hole at the bottom, just large enough to let it pass. In the beginning, the penny takes its time, slowly making its rotations. But, as the path narrows, the penny gains substantial momentum, and is soon moving  at two, three, four times its original speed. By the very end, as the penny nears its final destination, it moves at a speed the eye can no longer process. The penny becomes one solid blur of motion until it finally drops off into the black abyss. 

I doubt that I will be dropping into a black abyss anytime soon, but I do in my current preparations relate to the movement of the penny. As my departure date approaches, I feel the pressure of time bearing down. I see my actions becoming more frantic, and my thoughts tend to follow suit. I feel as if I will be at the point of near explosion right before boarding the plane in Atlanta. 

Dualistically, I sense a calm and silence after the wheels of the plane leave the runway, sending the plane hurdling into the air at rates more alarming than I actually care to ponder. I will let out one last, long breath of Western air, welcoming in the air of my Eastern experience, and anything that it might care to generate. 

Put more simply, it is the agony of anticipation that is currently killing me. 

The future is always present. It sometimes takes the form of an ideal. Sometimes a dream. Sometimes the bland prospect of having to live the same day, the way you just have lived it, toward an indefinite destiny. 

The past asserts its presence, adding tension to the dialogue between time and thought. It is a reminder. A reminder of old selves. Of both calm and turbulence. A reminder of the thousands of ways in which we once fell short of our vision for ourselves. 

The past does not determine the future, but its effect is a unique one. We cannot, even if we so wish, forget our past. It is sometimes hurtful, sometimes helpful, but always a reminder of the way things went, and inherent in that, the way we wish things to go. 

As conscious and existing beings, our first responsibility is to differentiate between the things over which we have no control and those we do. We then must come to accept those things out of our control, and decide for ourselves what we will do with the rest. Undoubtedly, there will be a lot of factors within the next year that are well beyond my control. The doings of a government that is not my own. The customs of a culture that is still foreign to me. The actions of my peers who, too, will be under great pressure in this new adventure. 

However, there is more in my control that I often give credit. I hope to take control of each of my precious days in China, and live them to their fullest potential. I hope to reconnect with my vision of personal meaning, seamlessly weaving that meaning in with a clearer vision of my currently ambiguous future. 

This is both where I am, and where I am going.