Choices

In each of us lie good and bad, light and dark, art and pain, choice and regret, cruelty and sacrifice. We're each of us our own chiaroscuro, our own bit of illusion fighting to emerge into something solid, real. We've got to forgive ourselves that. I must remember to forgive myself. Because there's an awful lot of gray to work with. No one can live in the light the whole time.

 Libba Bray (A Great and Terrible Beauty)

Moving

Since moving to Korea I haven't been writing here as often as I once did, but I don't plan to stop altogether. The other blog (Shauna in Korea) has been a really awesome way to stay in touch with friends and family and tell people about life in Korea, but sometimes I just want to talk about life, and not Korea, and I don't want to share it all with those same friends and family that are dialed into the other blog - so I'll still write here when the mood strikes. If, however, you'd like to see what life is like in Korea for someone from Canada, you're welcome to pop over, as I do write more often and I tend to post lots of pictures.

I don't regret the choices that brought me to this point, but sometimes I really do feel like I have no idea what I'm doing in my life, just kinda steering haphazardly all over the road and taking every opportunity to launch all 4 wheels off the ground whenever possible... whhhheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!! Since my relationship ended and I made the big move life is different. I am different too in some ways. My head is quieter. I am introspective but still distracted. Lonely in a different way, but things are all simply exciting as well. Looking for challenges and trying to keep active in life, instead of just in my head, it's an interesting journey so far. Change sucks. Change is good. Change is inevitable. Life is change, non? Or was that something about a box of chocolates...

A Child of the World

I know that not every country in the world runs like ours at home in Canada. I know that different groups, children included, do not have the same rights and privileges that we have in Canada, but as a child of the world myself, this story (from February 1st) is really sad to me...

New Dehli, India is the host of the Commonwealth Games this year. For people who might not really know anything about the Commonwealth Games, (somehow I didn't), they started as the "British Empire Games" and have since become the "Commonwealth Games," with just over 53 countries (broken into more than 70 teams) competing in a range of sports. There are 10 core sports (like athletics, boxing, rugby sevens and hockey) and up to 7 optional sports chosen by the host nation (sports like archery, basketball, diving and triathalon). Our Aussie friends (as well as England, who gets to compete separately from the rest of the UK) do much better in these games than most olympics: Australia was the highest scoring country for 10 years of the games, England for 7, and Canada only for 1.

While I've never watched the fanfare myself, after reading about it the games sound like they'd be fun to go to. I'd have to say that if I were a competing athlete I'd be hoping the host country that year was somewhere exotic, i.e. not Hamilton, Ontario (sorry Hamilton), so I'd probably be excited to get a chance to go to India as part of a sporting event. The IOC website says that India is in a bid for the 2016 summer olympics, and the thought is that if this year's Commonwealth games go off well that maybe it will sway the bid in their favour for the 2016 games, so I'd imagine that India is under a lot of pressure to make sure that everything goes off without much being amiss (that whole 'being in the spotlight' thing. I'm having visions of days long ago when the poor were shuttled from the streets and into jails during large celebratory events to preserve a mightier cleaner vision of the city... or my days not-so-long-ago in Slave Lake, AB when the town would pay for the local vagrants to be bussed to a town a few hours north during the one-week summer festival so tourists didn't have to deal with them...

International competitions are ridiculously expensive, and surely every country that hosts a spectacle like this one goes through hardships on many levels to do it (talk to BC taxpayers this year, most are NOT happy). I'm not naive enough to think everything was done above-board even in my own wealthy and priviledged country as it prepared for the Olympics this year. However, I hope I'm safe in my assumption that we didn't have our small children working alonside their parents in the streets to get the job done quicker.

I've spent some time in New Dehli, and when travelling in India in general it was difficult to handle just being witness to the extreme differences in quality of life between and among people in different communities, towns and states. I think the point was even sharper having been raised in an environment of as much priviledge as I've always accepted as simply a 'Right' as a citizen of my country. When I say that I'm not referring to physical wealth per se, as my family certainly wouldn't have been thought of as wealthy, but more in terms of food, clean water, clothing, medical care, education, and being safe from the threat of guns and militant action. Maybe that's why this picture made me so sad.
 
Maybe the children in the photo are really just playing with some spare tools that are laying around while they wait for their parents to finish, and an overzealous or lazy journalist making assumptions behind the camera; After all, they're all clothed, none of them really appear to be working, right? Maybe the kids really just go hang out at the jobsite because they get fed for being there... maybe. Or, maybe this world we live in still has a long way to go.

Speechless

Is this not the most beautiful picture ever?
I thought it was an edited photograph all photoshopped to heaven and back.
I going to post it on my photo page to share it, but IT'S A WATERCOLOUR!!!!!...
Thing is, I can't figure out who made it, and I'd like to see more of their stuff...
Am speechless...

Choices

After some time I decided to make a big move, changing continents, exchanging one culture for another, returning to an old favorite place. I thought it was interesting when I arrived (after the jetlag wore off and I could think in complete sentences) how much differently I see things between one place and another. In relationships, for example, it is almost as though I stop being who I am, melting into some other, different thing, forgetting to do the things needed to be whole, complete and happy. After a much broiled over process I chose to end my relationship in the hopes that we can both be happier and healthier apart, not holding any space for renewal or rekindling, but perhaps enough space for friendship in some time.


A few days ago now I went out for a short visit with some old friends. Friends whose closeness I sacrificed at the time in the name of my relationship, for someone who wanted me all to himself and in the end wasn't worth it, on any level. I felt regret on seeing them again, for what I had lost in the passing, for what could have been and wasn't. I also felt glad that there's room and time enough in life to make changes, try again, do things differently.


It's hard to believe it's already been 10 days since I left, it seems like only a day has passed; in the same breath it's hard to believe that it's only been 10 days since I left, it seems a lifetime... I've been thinking a lot in this bevvy of time to myself, about all of the times I've started to come into my own, into who I am, who I wanted to be, and the ways I let my relationships at the time, most often the romantic ones, take over my life and redirect me from the path that would lead me back to myself, to the things I value. I have been doing this since I was 15 really, and it both saddens and frustrates me to see the pattern and the way I have repeated and repeated it over time, as though my feet couldn't lift themselves from the ruts I'd created.


It's time now, to stand up, get out of the ruts, and walk a new path. Time to take responsibility for this life of mine; for who I am, and who I'm not; for who I want to be, and who I do not; for what I want to do, and what I do not. Time to go to bed for the night, and wake up in the morning back inside myself. Time to take a look around the inside and the outside and take stock of how it is, how it was, and how I want it to be.


While I do the best I can in the moment with what I have, I want to do better and I want to be more of that woman who shines in the back of my mind, that image of the kind of person I deserve to be in the world. Everything happens as it does for good reason, and choices appear when they're needed, so I'm making mine... I choose me... no more others, me... I choose me.

I Am a Fearless Flower

My note from the Universe this morning reminded me, that I am a fearless flower...

A super-secret, double-reminder for all fearless flowers:

If you but soak up the sunlight you are given,
drink each drop of water I send,
and strive only to be yourself,
life shall quicken in your roots,
spirit shall raise you into the light,
and your bloom will inspire the world.

You see, Shauna... I do all the hard stuff!

The Universe