This, I think, is a common thought that I stumble upon repeatedly -- once or twice a month, whenever the seasons change, whenever circumstances jar me out of complacency.
I feel destined to repeat this growth process for the rest of my life, just as Clive Wearing's journal reveals the full force of his retrograde amnesia:
But his journal entries consisted, essentially, of the statements “I am awake” or “I am conscious,” entered again and again every few minutes. He would write: “2:10 P.M: This time properly awake. . . . 2:14 P.M: this time finally awake. . . . 2:35 P.M: this time completely awake,” along with negations of these statements: “At 9:40 P.M. I awoke for the first time, despite my previous claims.” This in turn was crossed out, followed by “I was fully conscious at 10:35 P.M., and awake for the first time in many, many weeks.” This in turn was cancelled out by the next entry.
(Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/09/24/070924fa_fact_sacks?currentPage=all#ixzz0kpvMQUvk)
It's difficult for me to continually feel like myself. I think I get too caught up in ambitions and associations and goals, which everyone says you're supposed to set and maintain and use as a measure of something important.
But I always find myself losing myself during the academic year, only to emerge during the summer into a better sort of existence, and I wonder during my transitions why I let it get that way.
My conclusion is that I need to travel again. I think back to last summer and the trip to Oxford as one of the most self-affirming times of my life. I need the distance and the space to recreate that feeling, in order to discover again what it means to be fearless. So: Tibet -- may you cure me.
Everything has everything to do with myself and nothing to do with any of the expectations I pile on myself, or any of the people in my life, or any of the lies I tell myself about why things happen.
This is the hardest lesson I will always forget.
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