night...

(bonus journal entry from my extra travel time last week...)

On a plane to London I read a disturbing book... "Night", by Elie Wiesel... holocaust survivor. I've read holocaust stories before, but this one seemed more real somehow. More horrible.

I don't know how the human spirit can survive such evil. I don't know how faith can survive that. I don't know if mine would.

I want to read the rest of his story... how he came back from that night. Real people. Real stories. They are the worst and the best of all...

That and an email from a friend yesterday are still ringing in my mind. He'd just returned from a trip overseas with his organization that rescues trafficked children, and was trying to come to grips with what he'd seen.

"God is there in the suffering..."

This is the thing – when there is such suffering and injustice in the world, how can I simply go on and live my life? There must be a way I can still make a difference. There must be a way I can do more, not less, with my future. There must be something God wants me to do.

Anything. I suppose it could really be anything.

Just not nothing.

:: The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference. – Elie Wiesel

serendipity...

The other day I randomly found an interesting online discussion, all started by a newspaper editorial:

The endangered joy of serendipity: the modern world makes it harder to discover what you didn't know you were looking for."

The writer echoes thoughts from my "almost missed" post, on less being more.... and abundance being distracting. He also iterates my feelings about online matchmaking (or any other form). (read it if you're curious...)

I think most of the editorial comes from the writer missing the "good old days", and he does make some points; however, the fact that I even stumbled across this article online is proof that there are still plenty of opportunities for serendipitous discoveries on the world wide web -- doesn't it really depend more on the nature of the observer?

Discovery is an attitude, I think. Whether you take the road less traveled or the one you already know like the back of your hand, you can be just as surprised by the serendipitous.

I'm thinking a lot about this as I anticipate moving back to America. Somewhere in my head it makes sense that there would be more possibilities for discovery in a place where I am surrounded by the unknown -- that Europe would hold so many more possibilities than my good old USA. But that's not necessarily true. My discoveries are limited more by my own inhibitions and mindset than by my location or setting.

I'm not by nature very adventurous. This entire life beyond North American shores has been a surprise to me. In my six years abroad I've grasped a small taste for wanderlust, but I don't think it's in my blood like my friends who have wracked up 80-plus countries. But that's why this life has been so good for me.

Every week and nearly every day, I am forced to do something I've never done before. And it usually does take me forcing myself. I don't know where the resistance still comes from, when time and time again I've been happily rewarded with positive experiences. Maybe it's just part of my personality -- my psyche -- to want to stick to the known and the familiar. Maybe it comes from growing up in a small town and a sheltered environment. Who knows -- but I do know that I grew up dreaming -- encouraged to dream. And that big, idealistic imagination has been enough to launch me past my own fears and logic thousands of times.

One response to the serendipity discussion echoes my thoughts nearly exactly:

We must allow ourselves to be surprised. We must relearn how to be human, to start again as we did as children - learning through awkward and bungling discovery.

:: "Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy." – Anne Frank