Moments of Clarity

I have no idea who of you (except for you mom) still read this thing.

But I hope some of you still do.

You ever just get flooded with a powerful sense of clarity?

Yeah, it's gonna be one of THOSE kind of blogs. So if you can't deal with that, I respect that.

It's near 2:30 in the morning (which arguably may have something to do with my perceived state of clarity), and I was just laying in bed after a more or less normal day when it just hit me. I just wanted to start crying. It was like this wave of pure gratitude washed straight over my prostrate body, and in one feel swoop I felt clean and clear. All at once I felt how lucky I am to have such a wonderful family, such kind, loyal friends, and to have the opportunity to pursue something I am passionate about.

Here I should also note that it is the end of the first semester out here. I have been pretty much drinking coffee and writing papers for the last week and a half. The coffee may have something to do with my being up at this hour, which, again, I'm sure has something to do with my current state of "clarity". Maybe someday really smart neuroscientists out there will be able to identify just exactly why and how these moments come (presumably being tired, stressed, lonely, and, oh yeah I forgot to mention that I also was reading Mary Pipher's "Letters to a Young Therapist" as I was laying in bed). Secretly I hope they never do.

While I'm sure that in the same way the make up of any experience (specifically attempting to be able to precisely pinpoint causality) is almost always more complex than we can understand right away, I think much of this comes from the paradox of having to be far away from home to realize how truly important it is. I don't think I've been as in love with (or at least in gratitude for) my homeland- Idaho (and really the great Northwest). I'm such a lucky little fart to have been born into my family, to have grown up in beautiful northern Idaho, to have gone off to a small college where I met both professors and friends (some of them professors who are now friends) who are some of the brightest and best human beings on this planet, and to be old enough and aware enough to be able to appreciate this...is now actually making me cry.

I guess I just felt the need to say just how much I love my family, my friends, and my beloved home country.

I'll leave you with a couple of quotations from Robert Frost (as quoted in Mary Pipher's "Letters to a Young Therapist"):

"Home is where when you go there they have to take you in."

"Families are something you haven't to deserve."


That was my moment of clarity. I hope it lasts until I fall asleep and that maybe, just maybe it sparks one for you.