Mar 22 2009
Supernatural Aid Scavenger Hunt Reflection
“A road is not for a destination but for a journey.” – Buddhist Precept. Buddha tells us to live in the present moment, and to not dream of the future, nor dwell in the past, but simply live in the present. He says a jug is filled drop by drop. We are who we are at the present moment, and with each drop of water that fills our lives, we are changed in some way … with each step taken we become something different and our end only comes when we cannot take any more steps and our destination becomes simply a point along the way. And so I begin … regardless of my end, or my destination … regardless of what happens, I am here and because I am choosing to live in my present, I am.
Where does my beginning lie? I fell as if each day is a new beginning. Each day I can be whatever I want to be … but of course it is easier to settle into a routine and not leave it, yet I try do achieve something different each day … whatever that be. Yet no matter the degree of my adaptability there lies within certain core traits that no matter what I am or become or choose to be cannot be separated or ignored. These core traits are my strengths.
One thing I have never found myself to be is extremely sad. Seldom do I label myself as sad because either my life has been too convenient, which it has in many cases, but beyond that I find myself very capable of being optimistic and finding some kind of solace in something. I find myself to be a secure person because I have so many loving people in my life that I can always find myself and find happiness in their presence … so one thing I feel confident that is always at my side, is friends and family, and they always bring me joy no matter what my condition is. The clue for joy revealed that it was located where joy comes from building a community … and for this reason I choose not to pick it up … I find my community service, for which I have far exceeded the requirement, comes as a joy to my life … and is something I do not want to stop. It is one of my greatest joys to serve my community and to interact with the marginalized as equals … and I do not believe I need any help to find joy in helping others.
I did not pick up discernment despite the fact that the clue suggested that discernment is “what every hero needs in order to discover his/her calling,” but I believe this to be untrue. I am a person of strong conviction and as an Indian, Irish mix … I find myself to be very strong willed and I would not listen to anyone but myself on which direction I ought to take in life because I believe that only I can judge what is truly best for me. I have a very analytical mind I think and I find myself similar to D.W. Yarbrough … that I need to control everything, however, I am different because what I cannot control scares me … in any case, I only trust my own judgement and no other.
This fact leads me to two things … faith and humility. I said that I cannot tolerate or stand that which I cannot control, and unfortunately that constitutes a great deal of things. This then is perhaps my greatest weakness … faith. I find it hard to trust in anyone, finding that it is best to rely on myself than on others … I go to mass every Sunday, yet I feel that I cannot truly find God. I am a practicing Catholic but skipped confirmation classes because I could not truly mean what I was required to say in the credence … I know that God has to exist, and that the idea of Him from the perspective of all religions seems to me wholly true … but I do not see Him as any influence in my life and I struggle to believe in His power … and because of this I place too much faith in myself. The clue says faith can be found with hard work and many revisions of my own self … and I have found that I have proved to myself that I am capable of a lot of things … not all of which bring me joy … but nonetheless, I believe that I have too much faith in myself and not in others … and I thus lack humility. I often place myself on a pedestal … and I need to be knocked down to reality. I am lucky enough to have access to any opportunity I seek and I think I frequently misplace this great gift as a right … and thus ignore the blessings I have and believe them to be merit based rather than a circumstance of my birth. I am overconfident and have found that my judgements have usually been correct … but for that reason I believe that I need to be brought down from this high pedestal I am on to truly begin a journey toward heroic circumstance.
I find silly things within serious moments that bring light to all the moments in my life … and I can find simple meaning in the smallest things and find the humor within … this language of humor comes naturally to me and I have found it to be one of my strengths in life … and something I can always retreat to when there is nothing else. Unlike French, it truly is the universal language and something that is always useful along any journey.
“Understanding true perseverance often requires walking in another’s shoes.” I am afraid to say that perseverance is my strength for how can I say such a thing when I have never faced some of the evils and torturous lives that so many face around the world. Yet when I place myself in their shoes … and I struggle with them … the desire to never quit has burned within me … and still does. I am speaking of a trip to Haiti with my father … where we slept in a Church and treated sick villagers … they had nothing and lived in little straw huts and used the bathrooms in a hut elevated over water … they were beaten, hungry, smelly, sickly … they were struggling and had little joy in their lives … but they lived on and they wanted to improve their well being … they came to the doctor and their perseverance inspires me to this day to want to help others pursue their lifelong struggle of survival … and although I am not supposed to think about my destination, one day I hope to go back to Haiti, or rather Africa and use my medical skills to bring others into their rightful dignity … so yes I think I have perseverance … I am certainly not a quitter in any case.
I find myself often more concerned with other’s thoughts than my own … and I always find myself helping others in chemistry, or in homework regardless of the amount of homework I have … I truly find myself a rather selfless person because whenever I am with others I find myself constantly concerned with their feelings … questioning if they are having fun … if they feel awkward … etc. In my community service I have found myself to be further selfless … because in reading to many patients and giving them books through the library cart, I am exposing myself to many infections within the hospital and it is very time consuming … but I enjoy it and I believe I have learned many fundamental truths about others from my eternal observations of others.
Wisdom is something I believe that one can always use … and that to say that wisdom is a strength is simply blatantly showing a lack of wisdom. Wisdom comes from experience and I believe that the bizarreness and the beauties I learn along my path will transform me into someone with great wisdom and that all of this enlightenments will come from the supernatural … since all things are from Him, and so I truly believe that wisdom is a revelation and a correlation with supernatural power and beauty and so is something I need desperately yet cannot be found from any book or any blatant source.
It has been said by Anne Edwards that feelings are the only true facts that we have in life … and I hardly have the courage, nor faith to believe in my heart one hundred percent but as the clue says … that is where the biggest decisions must be made. I know this statement is correct but I hope that along my hero journey I do not lose track of this insight …
I seldom lose track of exactly where I am in my journey … and what my next step is … or what the significance of my past steps have been … and I really hope that some kind of talisman … like a mirror … will someday show me the way to my own heart when I have lost all else.
I am often frustrated because I do not always trust in the hero journey and for this reason I need integrity … where it is an invitation to my journey … I need the courage to start my journey, and the strength to not fray away from, and the patience to be able to simply proceed step by step even when I want to leap. I think a large part of me is afraid that my journey will take me somewhere I do not want to go.
The talisman for courage was my second favorite after insight’s mirror … the crayon for me represented the courage to take that color and spread it throughout my life … to spread and embrace the new color of the hero journey … something I desperately need.
And so it is. Five strengths and ten weaknesses. Although I did not think of the symbolism of these numbers initially … I believe the number ten is significant symbolically in my journey … as it is a number of perfection … I believe truly that with the acquisition of these traits along my hero journey, I truly can become a hero … and the tenth day of creation in my life can be complete ……
And so I begin in search of these traits that while they are in my medicine bag … the talismans are not truly alive just yet … but identification is the first step to any problem … and so it begins.
