Commitment is the Key to Unlocking Transience

Finally, a minute to breath...

To Think of Time

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To think of time-of all that retrospection,
To think of to-day, and the ages continued henceforward.

Have you guess'd you yourself would not continue?
Have you dreaded these earth-beetles?
Have you fear'd the future would be nothing to you?

Is to-day nothing? is the beginningless past nothing?
If the future is nothing they are just as surely nothing.

To think that the sun rose in the east-that men and women 
  were flexible, real, alive-that every thing was alive,
To think that you and I did not see, feel, think, nor bear our     
 part,
To think that we are now here and bear our past.

--Walt Whitman

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Special things happen when we decide to make a commitment.  For people who like to fly, committing to things is not often easy.  We tend to get distracted by the "greener grass" syndrome, or simply, wanderlust or ignorance.  

The idea of commitment can take many shapes and sail many seas and trek across rocky terrain and travel to the moon and back before committing itself to the planet Earth.

In this 2013 year, I told myself I would commit to something. Anything could do.  Gradually, I found out the commitment would take shape in the form of a location.  And that location would be Norman, Oklahoma.  On the outside, I guess it doesn't seem like much of a commitment, but as soon as I made that decision, the world opened up, wider than traveling all around it ever could.

When I was offered a job to teach English as a second language at the University of Oklahoma, I didn't think twice about taking it. I know it had everything to do with the commitment resolution I had made a couple of weeks prior.  And it felt really good.  For the first time, in a very long time, I don't feel like my feet are hanging out with my head, up in the clouds.  The ground feels firm and cushy and flexible, beneath my feet and the clouds are fluffy and like thought bubbles around my head.  I think there could be something to this teaching profession...

I'm no stranger to being thrown into something new and expected to figure things out, with only a little help and a little guidance, along the way.  Basically, enough to make you feel like the pool you're swimming in is big and deep and wide, but on the other hand, you have to learn how not to drown, by listening to the voices on the pool's perimeters.  Two weeks into classes, I finally figured out the best way to keep your head above water, is simply, to float on top of it.

My students mainly come from the East, where oil is cheaper than water and their country's population takes up ten spaces on piece of paper.  It is a different experience to be among the majority, until you are among the minority, once you cross the classroom threshold. I have been an outsider many times in my life but this is a completely new experience- to be "noticed" the way one is "noticed" while traveling overseas, but you haven't even left your backyard. 

And yet, therein lies the beauty.

There is something about the Oklahoma winter and the dormancy of nature, which adds to the comfort of my new found commitment. Sparseness surrounds us these days, making it easy to want to shed ourselves from material possessions, or helping allow us a better acceptance of loss (whatever form it may take).  We can reconnect with our simplicity, while anticipating the new growth of the spring.

Right now, it is a good time to be back in Oklahoma.
Perhaps this simple sense of self realization is just the thing to help keep me from becoming...committed.