Getting excited....

I have been getting lots of questions like "So are you excited about going to India?" I usually said yes but the fact is I had not really felt it until today. It is often the oddest thing that can set it off. I happened to look at a calender and realized I was merely a week away from leaving. Maybe it is because a week is a period of time I can hold in my conscious mind. I can count the sleeps - imagine my routine passing before my mind's eye.

So now yes "I am excited!" As I wrote to a friend today this is an opportunity that hold the possibility of transforming my life in profound ways. If nothing else I will move out of my cultural cocoon into a world I have often imagined but never experienced. As my friend Margo often quotes "A mind expanded can never return to it original size." This is not tourism but is an opportunity to engage with people inhabiting an entirely different lifeworld. My lifeworld will be ineffably altered by the experience. Thus my level of excitement is understandable.

This upcoming journey has made me acutely aware of where I am in my life's journey and it is as if I have returned to a familiar place but as an entirely different person. I am back at the horizon I last faced when I was about to graduate from high school. I can still recall the sense of hope of the limitless possibilities that lay before me. Of course back then much of that was illusion and the stuff of dreams. That was over 40 years ago and I have managed to gain some little experience and perspective since then.

I have not become jaded or cynical. I still can see many possibilities and I still retain a powerful sense of hope. Yet this is tempered by the knowledge that whatever I aim for will require sacrifice and hard work. I can choose between illusion and possibility. I am no less excited by the world that is opening up before me for all of that.