Last week I bought a book, Six Months in Sudan, and a quote at the beginning inspired me yesterday when I felt that this passion to be part of something larger than my life here in Canada might never be fulfilled.
"I'm not telling you to make the world better, because I don't think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I'm just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it , not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave's a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that's what there is do do and get it while you can and good luck at it."
--Joan Didion
Commencement address at University of California,
Riverside, California, 1975
Commencement address at University of California,
Riverside, California, 1975
In Maskalyk, James, Six Months in Sudan: a young doctor in a war-torn village, Anchor Canada, 2010.
This quote definitely struck a chord and makes up for the the relative expense of this project, and for leaving my mom for the summer, and for leaving the Rockies behind....
When I am bitten by the fear that this chance to learn a new way of seeing shall yet fall through; when I doubt what I have to offer, this quote comes as an invitation to take the chance.
Yet, I also keep in mind that 'one shouldn't think with certainty about the future' (Maskalyk, 2010).
Finally, I keep centered by the meditation : Step through the dream. Each passion is a step -- not the End. This experience I am focusing on will be succeeded by others. Still, it is important to 'live it'.
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