I Don't Wanna Grow Up

Just a few days ago one of my coworkers asked me how I decided what I wanted to do when I grew up, as that is a question she is currently pondering. Since both of us are 25, it could be argued that we are already grown up and therefore the question is moot, but I don't feel grown up and I certainly haven't started a career so I think there is still some growing up to be done.

Well, that question started me thinking.

I feel like I'm living up to my destiny as a youngest child, preparing to live a fly-by-night existence once I finish school, always moving and changing, never staying put. I have so many interests and so many things I want to do during my life that I can't decide on a single career path. I could clearly see myself moving from country to country, city to city, job to job during my life, never settling anywhere permanently until forced to by old age or exhaustion.

To be perfectly honest, spending the rest of my life consigned to the suburbs with a husband, a white picket fence, and 2.5 kids sounds like eternal purgatory. Even considering the prospect of it makes me shudder with revulsion. Yes, I realize that that is most people's projected and expected future, but I can't handle it. I need to travel, to experience new things and meet new people, to accomplish something and feel like I've made a difference.

Ergo, my hope to carve out a career in the never-boring, ever-complicated world of humanitarian relief. In short, I want to be an aid worker.

I met a Canadian woman in Kabul who has been working for various NGOs in the microfinance field for ten years, and during those ten years has lived in 22 countries.

I love it!

I love to travel, and even more I love to get to know a place and a people, which you usually can't do unless you live there.

I will admit, based on my obsession with HGTV and especially the show "House Hunters," not to mention the burnout that affects everybody in my chosen field at some point, eventually I will feel the need to build a nest complete with my own permanent home. Eventually, I hope to stock that home with one-of-a-kind items I have picked up in various places rather than average items found in every chain store and therefore every home across the country.

I've never wanted to be like everybody else. My life will be MY life. Different. Exciting. Unlike every one I know.

Barred

Happy Memorial Day

One thing I've come to realize since my trip to Afghanistan is just how lucky I was to have been born here. I won't go so far as to claim that the U.S. is the best country in the world--that's pure arrogance, no to mention ridiculous--but it's a good place for the most part, and more importantly, it's home.

So please use this Memorial Day as an opportunity to remember all those who have fallen, whether through war or anything else, from this country and from all others, because the one truth is, everyone has someone who will miss them when they're gone.

Half-Extinguished Thoughts

   And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,
 With many recognitions dim and faint,
 And somewhat of a sad perplexity,                          
 The picture of the mind revives again:
 While here I stand, not only with the sense
 Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
 That in this moment there is life and food
 For future years.

             --William Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey

FYI, these photos were taken at Darul Aman Palace on the southern outskirts of Kabul, which is near where this suicide attack took place. The convoy apparently was on the road leading to the palace and the attack occurred at approximately the same time of morning we were there more than than two months before.

It just makes you think.

Outward Eye

"Your outward eye is like the palm of a hand: the palm cannot grasp the whole of the object."

- Rumi

Broom Seller

One afternoon we were driving through Kabul in our little mini bus as always, and we got stuck in traffic in the center of this busy intersection next to a bazaar. As we always did when stuck in traffic, we opened the windows and were all leaning out taking pictures. This old man wheeled his little cart full of brooms/brushes up to us, set it down, picked up these two examples of his wares and held them up for a minute while we snapped away, then set them back down, picked up the handles of his cart and trundled off again.

It was classic Kabul.

Generations

Spinning a Web

Somehow Afghanistan has done this--spun a web and ensnared me. I've thought of nothing else since I got back a little more than a month ago. I love everything about it: the country, the mountains, the people, the culture, the languages, the chai, even the dust and chaos of Kabul. I hope to go back there someday, and to be able to do something to give back what I can in exchange for everything it has given me. Afghanistan is a remarkable country made up of remarkable people, and I just wish there was a way to share this insight with the people of this country who only have negative images of such a fantastic place.

Red Cross Orthopaedic Centre