great minds think alike (except for my concluding rant)

Yesterday, walking home with concrete feet, after dragging myself through box-aerobics, I thought – you know, I don’t HAVE to do anything. I felt as light and free as when I made that statement to myself years ago, in the middle of writing my thesis. I told myself I could just walk away. I bring this up now because an interesting dichotomy of life is making itself known to me: entering into new experiences does not have to mean over-scheduling your life. It can be as simple as unplanned, no expectation, experimentation. Playing. We, cultures of the “West,” continually oscillate between seizing the day and keeping an eye out for the future. We may be hit by a bus in an hour but we may not.

Focus may be the key; that cliché about living in the present being a truism. But how to responsibly plan for the future while staying clear of the pitfalls of planning?

I wonder how effective those deprivation chambers are in stripping away the “noise” of the outside world and allowing the person inside to uncover the core of their reason for living, reason for striving (or not striving, as the case may be). I would probably have to be in there for at least 24 hours before I stopped day dreaming and replaying past events and just floated. I guess I’d need a catheter and IV for food. This is starting to sound like a lot of unpleasantness for some clarity. Traveling sometimes works too because you are so over stimulated that the inundation acts as a stripping away mechanism, as well. Yoga sometimes works (usually not prolonged enough). Sometimes breakfast alone in a busy greasy spoon works…

I watched the news last night and the first in-depth piece was on the Governor General and the media frenzy surrounding the expulsion of a grade 8 student (Patfield) from Rideau House. He disrespectfully asked if she was the one who spent all the money. I am so glad we are being kept up to date with such weighty political matters. And then we are subjected to an injection of fear with the close up of a pair of eyes – those of a serial rapist getting day patrol from the detention facility in Mission. And like news anywhere in the world, the only sound bites we get from outside of our country consist of the shockingly violent or anecdotal. And the damn Globe makes you pay at the newsstand and online. The Guardian seems to be the only option at this point