The end of an era

Can you believe it? This will be my last entry from Leicester. You must be wondering why I’m ending things so early. That’s because my MOM is coming to help me pack up and we are going to Paris, Rome and Florence over one week!!! I am unbelievably excited to see her. It’s really fascinating sometimes how life can bring you full circle. I started this journey 11 months ago, with my mom helping to settle me into my new life, and now upon my return she’s coming back to bring me home! I’m only in Leicester for another 10 days and then I head to London to meet my mom and we’ll be travelling for the next week, catching our flight back to Canada on the 17^th. Which means that I’ve had to finish up my dissertation a few days earlier, and it hasn’t been an issue. I’m actually almost done except for a few minor edits here and there. Everything has been backed up several times, in various places both on and off my computer so hopefully I won’t run into any problems.

On Wednesday morning myself, Z, and our two friends Rob and Bindy went up north to the Lake District for a night. The Lake District is part of England, but just underneath Scotland – and is known for its natural beauty. The area is divided into towns based on (you guessed it) the various lakes. If you’re familiar with the author Beatrix Potter, she was from the Lake District and her birthday passed a couple days ago. The town we stayed in, Windemere, was a picture perfect example of something out of The Tale of Peter Rabbit. It was an absolutely breathtaking trip. I finally got to see the true rolling hills and lush green countryside of England. We hiked on a couple of trails and even took a rowboat out on one of the lakes – of course we got the boys to do most of the rowing! Below are some of the MANY pictures I took. I loved being up there with nature. It’s so nice sometimes to just turn off your mobile for a couple of days and feel like there is nowhere else you need to be or anyone else you need to be with at that very moment. Eckhart talks about trying to be present in everything you do, and I felt completely present with my surroundings, connected 100%. We have all these little thoughts buzzing around in our heads constantly, I felt so lucky to be able to shut them all off for a couple days of peace and tranquility.

On our way out, we also stopped in this town called Blackpool and it was the craziest place I’ve ever visited in England. It’s kind of like a really dowdy version of Clifton Hill in Niagara Falls. Lots of cheesy lights and (ahem) intriguing people walking around...the only beautiful feature was the shore of the Irish Sea on the opposite side of all the games and theatres. Some people were even swimming, but the water was a bit too cold for us still, we decided to just play in the sand and do some ‘creative’ artwork. We did have exceptionally beautiful weather for both days. This whole week in fact has been the perfect summer temperature – lots of sun, only reaching about 25 degrees. I hope it stays like this for another 10 days (but considering I’m in England that’s highly unlikely).

Last night I went to see the new Batman movie – unfortunately not in Imax because Leicester doesn’t have an Imax cinema. But it was still packed with excitement from beginning to end. I couldn’t believe it was 2.5 hours long because the time just flew by! Even Z, who doesn’t like action movies at all admitted to enjoying The Dark Knight. The only thing that was kind of morbid was watching Heath Ledger as the Joker. He was excellent, but just knowing that he’s no longer alive and yet I’m watching him on screen seemed a little off to me. He deserves the posthumous Oscar nomination though, and I bet he’ll win it too, I mean you can’t really contend with someone who has died.

The rest of this week will be spent tying up loose ends. There are a lot of accounts here to close, suitcases to pack, friends to say goodbye to – oh and of course dissertations to print and submit! It’s a really strange feeling to have the last 11 months come to an end. Sometimes I find myself just sitting in my room, in awe of this whole journey. This is going to sound like such a silly analogy, but the best way I can describe it is like with weight gain or hair growth. You know how when you see someone every day, whether it be a spouse, friend or family member, you don’t really notice if they lose or gain weight or how long their hair has grown because you see the gradual transformation. But then if you haven’t seen someone for months you can tell right away that something has changed. Well I feel like I’m still the same person I was when I first got here, everything I’ve done, all the travelling and studying seems like such a small deal now. But I guess if somehow the ‘me’ from last September could see the ‘me’ now, they wouldn’t believe everything that’s happened in such a short time. It does feel sad in some ways to leave because we’ve created a little nest here for ourselves. The open fruit market in town, and those crazy paternoster lifts on campus and the 24-hour take away place up the street for our late night study cravings. The journey here is definitely done, I know that – but it doesn’t mean that it’s not sad to leave it. Anyways, life gives you what you need most, and that has been my mantra in coping with all this.

And not to worry readers – I will make sure to continue posting blog entries from Canada. After all, I will have my trip with mummy dearest to talk about and some other events and topics along the way I’m sure – which I will probably start a new blog to do (new URL will be posted here). So I guess all that's left to say is thank you for sharing this adventure with me for the last 11 months. I hope you've enjoyed reading about all my experiences, because I certainly enjoyed writing about them! I've been extremely blessed and fortunate to have gone through this journey and come out of it with only positive memories and life lessons, and I'm sure that it has to do with all the encouragement and support everyone has given me.

And because I would prefer to end on a smile and not a tear, I'll leave you with the following image:

I call it: Miss Piggy :)

You're part of the ocean

I heard a nice little story the other day. The story is about a little wave, bobbing along in the ocean, having a grand old time. He's enjoying the wind and the fresh air - until he notices the other waves in front of him, crashing against the shore.

"My God, this is terrible," the wave says. "Look what's going to happen to me!"

Then along comes another wave. It sees the first wave, looking grim, and it says to him, "Why do you look so sad?"

The first wave says, "You don't understand! We're all going to crash! All of us waves are going to be nothing! Isn't it terrible?"

The second wave says, "No, you don't understand. You're not a wave, you're part of the ocean."

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When I was in Munich with Mel, her friend MJ had a copy of the book, Tuesdays with Morrie. I read the first 50 pages one night before bed and I loved it so much. It's a true story about the author's (Mitch Albom) relationship with his sociology professor who is dying from Lou Gehrig's disease. In his last months alive, he imparts some profound words of wisdom that Mitch recorded and compiled into the book. I was telling my friend Sonali about it and she got me a copy of the book for my birthday. I finally finished reading it two nights ago and it was such a precious story. The above is probably one of my favourite passages from the book. Actually, the funny thing is I finished A New Earth the same night, and the two books complement one another really well. Morrie actually touches on a lot of the same issues Eckhart does like staying Present. Here are some other interesting points he raises:


-"When you learn how to die, you learn how to live"

-"Love others or perish" (reminded me of Eckharts' "Evolve or die" mantra)

-(On detachment from experiences) "You know what the Buddhists say? Don't cling to things, because everything is impermanent. Detachment doesn't mean you don't let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate you fully. That's how you are able to leave it. Take any emotion - love for a woman or grief for a loved one, or what I'm going through, fear and pain from a deadly illness. If you hold back on the emotions - if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them - you can never get to being detached, you're too busy being afraid. You're afraid of the pain, you're afraid of the grief. You're afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails. But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. And only then can you say, 'All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment.'"

-(On finding a meaningful life) "Devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning."

That last quote especially reminded me of the final chapter in Eckhart's book, where he talks about doing everything with either acceptance, enjoyment or enthusiasm. What really 'hit home' for me was the section on goals and how they shouldn't be based on an inflated image of yourself or having this or that. For example, I want to be famous or own a yacht. Instead, he says, you should see your goals as dynamic, pointing towards an activity you are doing, which connects you to other human beings.

"Instead of seeing yourself as an actor or famous person, see yourself inspiring countless people with your work and enriching their lives. Feel how that activity not only enriches and deepens your life but the lives of countless others. Feel yourself being an opening through which energy flows from the unmanifested Source of all life through you for the benefit of all."

Anyways, I just feel like it's no coincidence that these two books happened to return to my life right before my birthday - and eerily enough there is a passage that after reading I had to stop, and read it again because I felt like the book was actually talking to ME!

"It's very simple. As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed at twenty-two, you'd always be as ignorant as you were at twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It's growth. It's more than the negative that you're going to die, it's also the positive that you understand you're going to die, and that you live a better life because of it."

And I believe that was probably the universe's 23rd birthday message to me. These two books have become my manuscripts for living (and dying as well) and I highly recommend both of them.

(p.s. tomorrow is officially 1 month until I come home!)

Radiohead Concert!

Hi everyone!

Sorry for not posting in such a long time...but can you believe an entire year has almost gone by? I'll be submitting this dissertation in a month and then be home a couple weeks after that! Today I officially completed all my data collection, so now I can work on analyzing the results and finishing my report.

I'm going to keep this post short - I really just wanted to post a couple of video clips from the Radiohead concert we went to in Manchester last weekend. They were phenomenal! For an outdoor concert, the sound was really clean. I've always loved their music, but I think seeing them live just heightened my interest in their work. Anyways, here are a couple clips from the show - if you think we look pretty far from the stage, we were actually closer to the front than we were the back! The concert was held in a cricket field in Manchester - the place was packed! We only spent a night in Manchester but we did manage to do some shopping in the city and it's much more developed than Leicester. Did you know Manchester was the first industrialized city in the entire world? It's kind of how Mass Communications began as a field, because with industrialization came urbanization and loss of the family unit which meant city-dwellers had more leisure time on the weekends. There was a new niche for 'popular culture' in the form of media. And that's when scholars in Psychology, Sociology and Politics wanted to study what effect all this media was having on society. So that's where the name Mass Communications came from - we study how different means of communications inform the masses. Or atleast that's how I explain it everytime someone asks me "So what exactly IS Mass Communications?" or "what does a degree in Mass Communications lead to?". Sigh...

Oh we also went to our first Rugby game a couple weeks ago - it was Medics vs. Doctors so some of our friends were playing. Unfortunately the doctors lost (the Red team), which was the side all our friends were on. I can't really say I've learned anything more about Rugby other than it's very violent (and funny to watch - check out the pics below I think you'll see why!).

Well time for me to get some rest. I'll keep you updated on the dissertation this month, but soon you can just ask me in person how it all went (crazy isn't it?)! Take Care!

*My apologies about the font - this blog has a mind of its own sometimes!*