It happened three days ago. Upon returning from an afternoon of studying in the library, I needed to get my brain off of homework, and hacky sack is one of my go-to ways to accomplish that (see previous blog post). I was having a really good session, but it came to a sudden end when I kicked my hacky sack a little too high and a little too far. It landed on one of the metal bars of the sewage drain, and I watched in slow-motion horror as it slid through the cracks. It's my favorite hacky sack that I've had since high school...but I didn't love it enough to try to retrieve it from a 15 foot nasty sewer drain. Really, I do have my limits.
Upon this tragic event, I returned to my room to sulk for a minute, and then I went back outside with the one other hacky sack I had brought with me. Moving to a place that was far away from any sewer drains, I proceeded to play some hacky sack again. But this time, it was inevitably different. If you've ever had a favorite hacky sack, you know what I mean. After eight years of my life spent with this hacky sack, I knew almost intimately the way it would bounce off my foot; I had grown accustomed to its exact size and number of beads inside. This new hacky sack, though, had a different bounce to it.
Here's the thing, though. Although it will take me time to develop a new relationship with this other hacky sack, it will without a doubt have a positive effect on my overall, long-term hacky sack skills. I'm learning to adjust to a different bounce. It might be a harder challenge now to reach my semester goal of fifty continuous hacks, but in the process my skills are being honed in a way that they wouldn't have been if I had forever only stuck with my favorite hacky sack.
This post isn't really just about hacky sack.
I've figured it out that approximately ninety percent of my life has been spent in Wisconsin. It's the place where most of my first connections with new concepts were formed. It's the place that feels the most comfortable, the easiest, and "the way it should be." It's what I started out with and always refer back to in my mind. Wisconsin is my favorite old hacky sack.
Thailand has a different bounce to it. It's not that the bounce is qualitatively any worse; it's just that an adjustment needs to be made based on the way one has grown accustomed to having things bounce. It calls for an adjustment on many levels, but ultimately it makes a person better able to cope with whatever bounces their way.
To me, that's the beauty of taking this chunk of time in my life to pursue my masters degree at Payap University in Chiang Mai. To be sure, for two years I had already grown familiar with the bounce of life in Chiang Mai, so it wasn't quite as much of a shock coming here to study. But still, there are so many little and big differences with studying in a Thai university compared to my undergraduate program at UW-Eau Claire. I don't have any professors that come from the same continent as me. There are no printers for students to quickly print off their homework for free. The library closes at 6PM (the fourth floor, which has books in English, closes at 4:30PM). Convenience here means going to the newly built 7-11 behind the dormitory and sharing two refrigerators and a microwave among two hundred some students in the dorm. The electricity goes out for an extended period of time at least once a week. The bathrooms rarely have toilet paper.
All these things are an adjustment to the bounce of life back home in Wisconsin. I am willing to set those differences aside, though, and earnestly focus on getting the kick of things with a new bounce. Just like with hacky sack, my skills and competencies are being refined in such a way that a different bounce will ultimately make me a stronger player.
Peace!
Eric
0 comments:
Post a Comment