525,600 Minutes. How do you measure a year? (or Emily's Philosophical rantings)

Right now I’m measuring in Malaria pills. Two a day for the rest of my stay here+ 1 week after I return. I finished my first bottle of pills recently and it was like oh, wow. All my other supplies like conditioner and toothpaste and various vitamins are also making me aware of the passage of time. Our first few days in the old guest house seem like a lifetime ago. Like I’ve said, time is weird here, and I still kind of feel like I’m in summer camp.

Being here has also been a good chance for me to think about a lot of things in my life and who I am and who I’ve been becoming recently. I’ve had a chance to evaluate some of my past actions and look at some friendships which needed to be examined on a number of counts. I hope I can make up for anything I might have done and make right what needs righting. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m so far away or maybe because India is a deeply spiritual place, or maybe it was just the right time, but I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately.

While I can’t say that I’ve had one really life-changing moment ( and I can’t deny that I’m sort of waiting for it a little bit), I can say that the whole experience of being here has been changing me a little bit at a time. I believe we are changed by all our experiences, but maybe this time I can see it a little more. Not only am I getting to see India, I am getting to see the US in a different way. Students in the guesthouse are from all over the country (and some other countries too) and it has been really educational to get to know them. I’ve realized that I stereotype people more than I’d care to admit. Although I’ve traveled to a number of places around the US, I’m still a very East Coast/ New England kind of girl.

In a nutshell my view of the country has been something like this: the Midwest was the part of the country that didn’t matter, California was where all the uber weird hippy vegetarian/vegan people live, the South is just scary, although often hospitable, Florida is its only little oasis/retirement home and the northeast coast is pretty much where everything is happening. Yes, that is really sad, but I never realized just how ingrained those stereotypes were and how wrong they were. I’ve met fascinating people from Washington, Missouri, Georgia, California, New Orleans, Wyoming etc. They may not be the typical representative of their state, but really is there such a thing as a typical representative? I mean yea New York is going to vote Liberal and Texas is gonna go conservative but does that mean you can just compartmentalize people and leave them in their respective boxes?

I also realize I’ve been really lucky to travel the way I have and at the same time it’s shocking that with all this traveling I’ve still had so many stereotypes! I’m extremely grateful to my parents for letting me come here even though they had mixed feelings about it and for giving me the opportunities I’ve had to travel to quite a few other really amazing places. I’ve been lucky to have so much.

Talking with all these people has made me think about a lot of other things too besides just my stereotypes. It’s made me wonder who I am and how I come across to these people who have never met me and are getting to know me now. Everyone here has a very distinct and interesting personality, so I wonder what I’m like to them. I’m not sure who the me that exists right now is, but hopefully I will figure that out while I’m here. I’ve seen some changes in myself over the past several years which I’m not too happy with and I’m working to set myself back to the right place.

Along the same lines on a more philosophical note, I’ve always thought that everything happens for a reason and I’ve been thinking about that recently too. People don’t always like that idea because when something really tragic happens there doesn’t seem to be a reason and it can seem hurtful to imply that a tragedy was somehow deserved in cases where the opposite seems true. I was thinking though that maybe everything happens for a reason but that reason doesn’t necessarily pertain to us specifically which is why it doesn’t seem fair or right or whatever. We think we are the center of the universe but we are just one part of it so maybe something that hurts me needs to happen because it affects someone else in some necessary way?

Perhaps that is very wide view point but seeing as I am here in my Junior year with no real idea where my life is headed, I guess I have to believe everything will fall into place. I think things do fall into place, but lately I’ve been realizing that I need to at least make some effort to find at least a general direction. Direction is probably the wrong word because you can always change ‘direction’ and there isn’t really a destination (another problem I have- I’m always trying to get somewhere and missing the here and now (but I’m getting very philosophical in these paragraphs and I digress a bit)).

A lot of people on my program have a very strong sense of what their future plans are but I’m pretty much out at sea. Seeing as the economy is pretty broken right now and finding a job is a terrible task I can at least not feel too bad yet. I’ve been trying to figure out what I might want to do. There are so many things I’m interested in but I don’t know if I’ve found what I really want to do. Maybe it needs to be a collection of things. I’m interested in writing/editing/photography, which seems like the best bet but I also want to do something community service based and I also want to live on a farm and grow my own veggies and psychology sounds really interesting and possibly something I’d be good at but I don’t really know! There is social work, traveling jobs are pretty cool, and massage therapy… the list goes on. I love listening to people’s stories so I think I need to be involved with people. Therapy/psych is kind of intriguing because it’s the closest thing to getting paid to listen to people tell you about their lives, but I have no official training for that yet. So perhaps I can make some headway on choosing something(s) to do with my life.

At any rate, that was a bit of my inner musings and not so much about India as about my crazy mind and what’s been going on internally. I’ll get a more Indiafied post going soon. I’ve been composing a list of things I miss from the US and things I will miss in India, but it’s a bit early for that yet.

Note: We have no internet in our house because of some problem over in South Campus where we live and so this post is a number of days old now because it has been saved on my computer . I brought my computer down to main campus today to get some things done. Also I have tests coming up and next weekend I will be traveling to Goa which is a very interesting place.