I've been back for 1 month already. Thrown back into everything without stopping, and suddenly we're almost done with October!! It's like I blinked that afternoon getting on the plane in September and wound up here close to halfway through my third semester of graduate school. Only one to go. Then it's on to the next part whatever that may be. Now I realize that there will be a LOT of things in between (namely one certain thesis comes to mind) but my life is blowing by me so fast I can hardly hold on. I've got this sense of urgency that's come over me in the last month to not waste one second, one minute.
I know I've said it before, but why oh why can't we have a slow motion, pause, or stop button??? Sometimes I find myself blindsided by a moment, so simple, so painfully beautiful I want to keep it in front of my eyes, in my physical sight forever. I watched the sunrise for the first time in my 26 years two weeks ago. I've never seen anything like it. The lightening of a dark sky, the night finished. And then suddenly it's like the clouds catch fire, the sky is full of bright yellow light, and it's brilliant. Absolutely, unabashedly brilliant. I asked myself: "Why have I never done this before??? Witnessed such an amazing miracle of nature?" And in that moment I wanted to pause life--sitting on the dock of Lago di Varese in Italy, in beautiful company--and just soak it in for hours and hours, to the point where I could breathe it in, taste it.
But....no matter how much we want that, how much we yearn for that slow motion or pause button it will forever elude us. So 'don't blink' as Kenny Chesney sings in a song, because you may wake up one day on your last day, wondering what happened to the life you were supposed to live. Maybe that's a bit of a sad thought, but I don't think so. For me it's a reminder that even when life is in fast forward, I need to remember moments like that first sunrise and always look for the next adventure. Even if it's something like weekends doing homework with my two classmates (the 3 musketeers!) or pasta made on-site in the 15th century church where we're working. They are simple but beautiful. And I don't want to blink....because I just might miss one.
