Oceans of blue

I find that, upon reflection, I really was and am more of a judgmental person than I perhaps should have been and should be. I find this through realizing that I didn't want to stick around for an extra day after the wedding because I really didn't want to go to fellowship here. Why? Because while in America, I have a hard time a lot of the time with what I see as the 'lifestyle' of my fellows here. I went to a large group two weeks ago while at training, and they really seemed to emphasize the lifestyle over the relationship. That made me uncomfortable, and makes me uncomfortable that it made me uncomfortable.

I'm still learning lessons, it seems. Perhaps the one on my horizon now is to get that I live my own lifestyle where I'm at, and I am perhaps more enslaved and enmeshed in the lifestyle than I am the relationship myself sometimes. It's just easier to justify in my head (because it's in my head). I also find that I have censored myself a good deal from the contextual discussion of where I am and what I do, and that uncensoring myself feels forced and awkward at the current time.

As though I didn't have enough to say already, I just also wonder sometimes about the irreality of those parts of my personality that seem to have changed greatly over the past 12 months. Is this really me anymore? Is this the me that was always here, or the me that has emerged from the me that was? Is me changing a bad thing, or is it just more of the growth from the new situation?

Furthermore, when I survey the wondrous, I start to ask myself, "Would I have been content, for the rest of my life, in the way that I used to 'understand' it, had I not gone out?" Would I have changed the way that my beliefs manifest themselves in my life, had I just stayed in the little world that I had attempted to construct for myself? Maybe, but the truth is that I didn't construct that situation, I didn't construct that little world. I just let it come about, no, I watched it take shape around me. I didn't make it, nor did I make the one that I live in now. All of it seems to be like a piece of jazz - started out with a few instruments, just a piano and drums, playing a few simple notes. Then in came the clarinet and the oboe, adding a few more layers to the sound, a bass strumming a solid foundation. I can't wait to hear what comes in next.

So I tie this all in to the day's events by saying that I also can't wait to hear the two bands that are playing merge into one band, and hear the new instruments and beats that get integrated into their lives.