Dreaming About Old Habits

I slept through my alarm this morning. It took me less than a week of classes to fail to wake up after the dreaded beeping. I immediately fell into a dream justifying why I could sleep through class. Apparently, in the class we were going to learn how to boil water so if you were already familiar with that skill you had permission to skip class. Fortunately for me, my brain was awake enough to reason that that couldn't be the case and I awoke with a start with 20 min to dress and hurry to class.

Why am I choosing to tell you this? It reminded me of something I needed reminding of; I am still me. I have all my same bad habits and weird quirks. All the same fears and strengths. I am still the girl with weird dreams who sleeps through her alarm most mornings. I came to Lithuania and somewhere deep inside I think I believed that if I just went somewhere else I could be someone else, the person I thought I should be. But that's not ever true, is it?

I am currently sitting at my desk on the sixth floor looking through my huge window at a gorgeous scene. There is snow everywhere and the sky is clear of clouds. The sun has just dipped beneath the horizon but traces of sweeping pink, yellow, green, and blue linger behind hazy outlines of buildings and trees as lights begin to illuminate the streets and windows. It's breathtaking. It's where I am, but it says nothing about me. It doesn't define me or do anything to me.

Sure, I am in a new place. And yes, I want to grow and change and learn here. But just being here won't do that for me. It requires something of me. Otherwise, I will come home the exact same person who left and I don't see that as a good thing. Likewise, I don't think it would be healthy to come home a completely different person either. But if I don't grow, then my time here would be wasted. It would be wasted no matter where I was because life is a growing process and it doesn't stop unless we make it stop by becoming complacent. I don't want to ever get to the point where I am complacent. Growing can hurt, I have learned this in excruciating detail during the past few years. Despite that, we continue to choose to grow. Because the outcome is worth the pain. Because the masterpiece emerges from the mess.

Peace.