Sharing Wisdom

Lisa is a friend of Nina's and Nina is the friend who sent me to China. Nina took off for the Peace Corps in Moldova a month before I left and Lisa left nine months ago for Vietnam. At home, they were a slightly older group of friends who were everything I wanted to be - well traveled, interesting, and content.

We've been keeping up online. Lisa wrote a particularly powerful blog today about greatness. It's a disease I've always had, as does she, some clinging feeling that one must aspire to greatness. Not nessecarily popular fame, not nessecarily wealthy, but great. Great the same way some obscure and ancient E.P. from your favorite band is great. I always assumed that if I did find greatness, it would be completely an accident. I wasn't searching for it like Lisa. I assume I have little control over it. It's a disease though because you can't be content being what 99.9999% of the world's population is... just being a human - "try to make ends meet, try to find some money, then you die."

I've always taken it as some secular stab at immortality. Being remembered. There's something humbling though about being 1 person in a county of 1.3 billion. It's even more eye opening buying a 30 cent lunch from a perfectly content street vendor.

Anyway, she writes:

I had put a great amount of pressure on me ever since I step foot in this country because I believed that my time here was my "make it or break it time." I wanted to make something of myself here. I wanted to do something important. I wanted to be great. I wanted to make so much money that Id get myself out of debt and start something that I could continue when I go back to the States. Every day that passed when I lived here made me feel more and more guilty for the fact that I never got started on it and every day was pressed to make up for all the days prior.

And;

Something happened in the past couple of months though, and I stopped thinking about my future. I was having a conversation session with a friend whos in her mid 40s, divorced, with no children, and she told me this that life isnt so complicated. In fact, its very simple. She went on about a friend of hers who took so much time and worry about the meaning of his life and what he wanted to do with it. Her friend is in his mid 40s, divorced, with kids. A few years ago, I took it to myself to listen to anyone older than me and to take their advice, no matter how much I despise advice.

Later, descring how she started teaching English (the last thing she wanted to do) she continues;

So, Im pretty much throwing in the towel, and I'm gonna stop trying to prove everyone wrong when everyone is... well, right. I'm not gonna fight that any longer and I'm not going to continue to pressure myself for no reason at all. I'm going to just make myself happy and love my freedom. Im not going to earn plaques; Im not going to be anything to brag about. Im just going to be that goofy wanderer who doesnt have a care in the world. At least thats how my mom and a friend described me as.

My response was,

There's something about teaching in particular that's satisfying. If you're any good you make connections, you see people improving and you know it's your influence. You become great, in a sense, just not to the whole world like I originally planned. The world's a bigger world than I thought, anyway. I'm happy enough being a great person within my karass just as I said I'd be happy enough being great with a certain type of people.

I like your idea on listening to the advice of older people, no matter how tough it is to swallow.

I spent a weekend with my grandparents last Christmas and I did everything I could to extract words of wisdom from my increasingly feeble grandfather. He's near deaf, near blind... but I knew he had a sharp mind. I remember it. What I got from him was this,

"No matter how hard it seems sometimes, things get better."

Tags: Treyopia China Life Teaching