I’ve learned a lot since school let out for the summer. It may be nothing monumental, but it’s the kind of stuff about myself and about my culture that they just can’t teach in a classroom. Well, they try but it doesn’t often stick.
A road trip I didn’t want to take taught me that a summer job as a tour guide is something I want to try, and that learning French can get you far, even in something as simple as that. On this same road trip, a tour of an aquarium showed me that I absolutely do not want to be a marine biologist (too slimy), but being a lab technician would be more interesting than I thought. (Microscopes are fun!)
One of my friends dropped by last night, and I even managed to find a lesson in that. You see, he’s on a road trip, and underestimated the amount of time it would take to get here. He had planned to spend the night in a place that’s actually two hours away, but by the time he got here it was about eight in the evening. So, my parents offered him the sofa for the night. Which lead me to think about history. Years ago, as my grandfather would say, if somebody needed a meal or a place to stay the night, you just gave it to them. It could be a friend of a friend, or someone you just met, it didn’t matter. I mean, my friend was going by car and the distance between places was still too much. These travellers back then would have gone by boat, horse, or on foot. You couldn’t just turn them out into the cold and say, “They’ll find a place to stay,” when it could be a day’s trek to the next town. I guess I just kind of figured that out last night.
Just writing this post has made me realize that these are the kind of things that can only be learned if a person allows it. I can only learn these things if I take hold of certain moments, words, feelings, and thoughts, and analyze them a bit. Not to completely dissect them so far that they lose their original meaning, but just enough so that I can take a feeling like, “Ew, this seaweed is gross,” and translate it into “Marine biology is not for me!”
Thanks for reading!
~Another Jesus Freak
Truth Gotta Be Spoken 