How annoying is it for your life to be filled in boxes? Well for one, you can't find things. . .things you need.
I spent the second half of Sunday trying to find my birth certificate. The first half was spent sleeping and watching the Life of Pi. I really like that movie! And it got me motivated to purge. Well, actually doing my taxes and finding my birth certificate got me to purge. But there is a part in the movie where Pi speaks of losing Richard Parker. After all the trials and tribulations they went through together, all the memories they shared from the weeks, months at sea, as soon as they hit dry land Richard Parker simply turns his back on Pi and walks aways from it all. Mr. Parker had moved on. Pi proclaimed it as letting go, and it was much more difficult for him to "say goodbye" to the life changing experience he had just survived through. I can relate to Pi. Though I hope he wasn't at sea for 2 years, he had experienced some extreme traumatic circumstances that would effect any young person; thrown over board into the depths of sea, losing his entire family, leaving his friends behind, and the life he grew up with, and then being stranded on a small boat with a live wild carnivore! That's definitely some stuff to make you want to pray!
Through it all, Pi never lost faith in God, but then why was it so hard for him to believe his life was about to change once in Mexico? Why was he soo attached to an animal that he feared would eat him alive? Why was it hard for him to let go of his new "lifestyle", that he knew would be temporary? Because when trauma hits, it doesn't just effect you for the moment, it's a chemical change that is stamped in your soul for life. And it doesn't matter the degree of trauma, anything that is outside your range of "normality", I believe could be considered a life changing experience. And of course there is the time factor. Major things may happen once, and quickly, but minor things may happen again and again over time, so, eventually your habits change. Seeing millions of ants in my SE Asian apartment wasn't necessarily a "painful traumatic" experience, but it was annoying as ever!, and there seemed to be NOTHING I could do to keep them away. So, even now, a whole year later after living in Viet Nam, I have a fear of leaving food out in the open, or leaving crumbs on the counter, because all I see is a mad rush of sugar-sucking spider-shaped ants coming to feast on whatever morsel they can clench their jaws on. So as I purge and search for my birth certificate, I ask myself, why not make life easy and turn in my expired pssprt? (yes I abbreviated the word because I declared it as "lost".) Because, I don't want to give up tangible evidence of the life I once had.
Because, I may share the story with my children one day and they may not believe me.
Because, I just can't.
I also found old letters from a love I once had. I thought about getting rid of those too, but I didn't. Why waste the space? Because its evidence that someone (outside of my family) truly did care for me unconditionally. Evidence that a man can and will put in the time to remind his woman how special she is to him. Because it reminds me not to give up, but to start over.
I spent the second half of Sunday trying to find my birth certificate. The first half was spent sleeping and watching the Life of Pi. I really like that movie! And it got me motivated to purge. Well, actually doing my taxes and finding my birth certificate got me to purge. But there is a part in the movie where Pi speaks of losing Richard Parker. After all the trials and tribulations they went through together, all the memories they shared from the weeks, months at sea, as soon as they hit dry land Richard Parker simply turns his back on Pi and walks aways from it all. Mr. Parker had moved on. Pi proclaimed it as letting go, and it was much more difficult for him to "say goodbye" to the life changing experience he had just survived through. I can relate to Pi. Though I hope he wasn't at sea for 2 years, he had experienced some extreme traumatic circumstances that would effect any young person; thrown over board into the depths of sea, losing his entire family, leaving his friends behind, and the life he grew up with, and then being stranded on a small boat with a live wild carnivore! That's definitely some stuff to make you want to pray!
Through it all, Pi never lost faith in God, but then why was it so hard for him to believe his life was about to change once in Mexico? Why was he soo attached to an animal that he feared would eat him alive? Why was it hard for him to let go of his new "lifestyle", that he knew would be temporary? Because when trauma hits, it doesn't just effect you for the moment, it's a chemical change that is stamped in your soul for life. And it doesn't matter the degree of trauma, anything that is outside your range of "normality", I believe could be considered a life changing experience. And of course there is the time factor. Major things may happen once, and quickly, but minor things may happen again and again over time, so, eventually your habits change. Seeing millions of ants in my SE Asian apartment wasn't necessarily a "painful traumatic" experience, but it was annoying as ever!, and there seemed to be NOTHING I could do to keep them away. So, even now, a whole year later after living in Viet Nam, I have a fear of leaving food out in the open, or leaving crumbs on the counter, because all I see is a mad rush of sugar-sucking spider-shaped ants coming to feast on whatever morsel they can clench their jaws on. So as I purge and search for my birth certificate, I ask myself, why not make life easy and turn in my expired pssprt? (yes I abbreviated the word because I declared it as "lost".) Because, I don't want to give up tangible evidence of the life I once had.
Because, I may share the story with my children one day and they may not believe me.
Because, I just can't.
I also found old letters from a love I once had. I thought about getting rid of those too, but I didn't. Why waste the space? Because its evidence that someone (outside of my family) truly did care for me unconditionally. Evidence that a man can and will put in the time to remind his woman how special she is to him. Because it reminds me not to give up, but to start over.
