Life changes ahead

I’m going to give notice to my boss and my company on Tuesday.  As if this decision is not really real enough, it is about to become significantly more real this week.  Hmmm, this is looking like a philosophical posting – readers beware.

In life each person has the choice to:
  1. pretend there is no personal control, changes are all fated.
  2. try to stay the same and not change, 
  3. try to take complete control of the changes, or 
  4. make peace that our lives change by a combination of personal choice and outside forces.  


I never remember believing in the first choice.  I was naive enough to live for a time as if the second one was true.  I still MAINLY act as if the third one is true despite overwhelming evidence over last few years.  One might think that recent events would have already been proof enough that this is not possible – but I've got a hard head and a stubborn streak.  I think that going into the Peace Corps will reinforce the fallacies inherent in the first three and finally allow me to embrace and follow the fourth choice.

We all change.  This point was brought into better clarity with a friend's comment that I was now a “tree hugging hippy”.  First the background:  I love socks and shoes – I live in socks and shoes.  Except for the beach and swimming pool I've NEVER been comfortable in sandals.  I'm the only one in my family growing up to have this preference.  I had many arguments with my brothers and sister who insisted on going the sandal or barefoot route.  They, with my parents, have been firmly in the Birkenstock camp for years, decades.

Now I've been told that Ghana will be too hot for socks and shoes all the time so I bought a pair of Birkenstocks and thus the hippy comment.

Currently, I’m trying to get the sandals and my feet on friendly terms.  So far the sandals are not playing nice.  There is still time to work out the relationship and no one said that change would be easy.

The comment got me thinking about the tree hugging hippy idea on two other levels.  First, although I have been on the bandwagon for environment stewardship for a long time that comes from a scientific belief and a rational conclusion that severely harming a closed ecosystem beyond its carrying capacity is STUPID for those thinking about future generations.  So tree huger maybe...

However, I've never been what one would call a hippy.  I've always been waaaaay to self-controlling to be classified as a free spirit.  Heck, I looked up hippy to see what characteristics I shared with the Wikipedia entry.  Let's just leave that as enough said.

Second, some people my presume that being a hippy is required for the Peace Corps.  I’m not expecting that to be the case.  Reading blogs and Facebook entries shows this to be true.  Certainly, most people join with the desire to help people - but that desire is not limited to one of the many artificial categories of liberal, conservative, religious, secular, this, that, and something else.  The volunteers will all be different, all have things in common and things that get on each other’s nerve from time to time.


I do think that the service will help me better understand that my limits are no so limiting and highlight further things that need to change.  Some of my next steps may be more painful than recent steps spent breaking in sandals.  However, sometimes we need to feel a little pain to change the way we walk, talk, think, and act.

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