huge coils of garlands of flowers in a market in Bangalore
orange and sky-blue boats bob in the smoke and flames of oil lamps along the Ganges during evening prayers
you-know-what in Mumbai
So I guess that's #1: that life is full of amazing things everywhere you turn. I already knew that, really, and it's one of the reasons I love museums so much, but it's always great to have your beliefs affirmed.
#2 Your friends can get married and it won't necessarily create negative changes or difficulties in your friendship. Lots of people know this already, though I also have good proof that it's not true for everyone. But I'm grateful that it seems to be true in my little neck of the woods.
#3 Something I should have learned a long time ago but, again courtesy of traveling in India, I finally figured it out this year: it is important - so important - to keep your definitions flexible. We all know this about expectations, that we should hold them loosely and make sure they can adjust with context. But underneath expectations are the simple little words we use to form them, and these too have to give.
Here's a stupid-tourist example: I've lived most of my life in the midwestern chunk of North America, so I thought I had a pretty good sense of hot and humid weather. And I did, for the midwestern chunk of North America. Some parts of India, in July, are hot and humid in a way I could not conceive of. The evening I spent at the Wagah Border crossing between India and Pakistan in Punjab, for example, was so muggy that my fingers were pruney from my own sweat.
Yes.
But the much more important instances of this me applying this willingness to re-think what things mean happened for ideas like food and marigold and generous and brilliant and welcome and home and friend. I hope to be able to keep being flexible at home, with situations that seem familiar, with things and people I think I already know.
#4 Unlike Sharon, I'm admittedly a full-fledged dog person, and my sweet Leroy
will be delighted to know that I have finally realized that a ten-minute walk around the block in -20 weather at 6:45 am is no sacrifice at all compared to how happy it makes him.
#5 Sometimes you have to spend $3000 to make sure your tree doesn't fall on somebody's house, and that is the price you pay for owning a house, and it's for the good of all concerned, so you should just stop fretting about that money and consider it an investment in Doing the Right Thing. Since you have to and all. So the lesson to extrapolate here is that you should take care of your responsibilities and try to be positive about it, because most of the time in life you can choose to try to have a good attitude even about stressful things.
#6 TV teen dramas are goooood, and if I want to spend an entire day watching DVDs of Degrassi Junior High, then that is okay, because, on the flip side of the version of being a grown-up that I grudgingly accept per #5, I am the boss of me and I'm allowed to do
that sometimes, especially if it is balanced out with some PBS (even if PBS is showing some kind of Masterpiece Theater adaptation that is in essence a gussied-up teen drama).
#7 As I write this it's dawning on me how it's all very well and good (the grammar of this particular phrase puzzles me - anyone else?) to think of these things but I had really better act on them, hadn't I? At least now they're all published, so any of you are welcome to hold me to them.
Tagees will have to self-select; you all know I'd love to read what you have to say any day. And now if you'll excuse me, I've got some Gilmore Girls to watch.
