It takes no effort to appreciate life. Even when you feel like nothing is in your favor, opportunities arise in weird places….
A woman named Olga is teaching me Russian right now she’s from Kazakstan… Yes like in Borat, the joy I get from learning her language is incredible. I am learning to accept my circumstances and take advantage of the opportunities even in the small places…so am learning Russian. Olga leaves tonight but the last two weeks have been filled with Russian key words, numbers, the alphabet, and some common curse words:) the last two weeks I have been listening to her talk about growing up in Russia and living the good life until the 90’s came around an the Soviet Union took over and communism set in. Literally over night she watched every grocery store get cleaned out completely….nothing….from grocery stores to waiting in line for 3 hours a day for a little piece of meat. She had a toddler and a baby in her belly at the time…she’d wait all day and sometimes by the time she got to the front of the line, all the meat would be gone. She watched her dad’s huge savings account get taken away to the equivalent of a days lunch money…she had winters where she’d have to put vegetables in big bins of rice in the basement so it wouldn’t freeze. She told me in Kazakstan there is no such thing as diapers or toilet paper so when she raised her children…every pair of pants had to be individually hand-washed and they used the newspaper as toilet paper. The stories are crazy and so she shares, I listen, and remember how fortunate we are as Americans to use the restroom in clean water and wipe our asses with toilet paper throughout the days….
Life is so beautiful when you can see the different perspectives all around us. The most important thing to realize is that whatever we may be going through, it’s never really that difficult and eventually everything moves on and gets replaced with new situations and opportunities. When I’m at a low point, I cease what can be done like learn a new language and meet new people and listen to their stories, get outside of myself….
Apart from all this I have been making sure to strive for new goals:
I am signed up for a glacier climbing course that starts next month, I’m going to Hawaii with my family in January, the big Island specifically… I have never seen lava before so I’m really excited about it and excited to be with my family again. I bought tickets to see Cheryl Strayed (the author of Wild and solo-PCT female hiker) speak here in seattle and I’m also going to a yoga training this June.
Only 15 more days…I can’t believe it!
