The physics of experiencing life

When shuttles return from the moon re-entry involves screaming through the flaming heat of the atmosphere. While coming home from Namibia isn't quite that bad, sometimes it seems like it. Anybody who's travelled cross-culturally knows what it's like to come home and experience the tension of not wanting to fall back into everyday life here but keep some of the tendencies and habits you learned in other places. For me it was walking.

Our last night in Arandis the pastor's daughter, Pearl, was hanging out at our house and so she wouldn't have to walk back home alone in the dark, a group of us walked her home. We walked the long way around, down the long, quiet road on the outskirts of town where there are houses on one side and nothing but desert as far as you can see on the other. The lights from the town aren't as bright on that road so the view of the stars is amazing. You can even see the Milky Way. I don't know whether it was short legs or just not wanting to go home, but she kept saying, "You're walking too fast." I'd hardly realized until she said it that half our group was way ahead and the rest of us were struggling to slow down enough to walk with her. It got me thinking how in America we're all about getting there. We're all about accomplishing the goal. The purpose of our outing was to walk her home and come back, we just set a pace to get it done without a second thought. But what Pearl understood, we totally missed. It didn't have anything to do with our velocity, but everything to do with our perspective. For her it was a last chance to spend time with these people she'd fallen in love with who would be leaving the next morning. She knew when we reached her house it'd be over. She was all about the walk, not the destination, so she kept reminding us, "Walk slower."

On our way home we made it all the way to Paris without a snag, then when we were about to board our last plane for the final leg home they delayed our flight another 10 hours. So we went about switching gates and going through security...again, and getting some food. We got online to update the blog and let people send messages home. But 10 hours is still a long time and we were all tired and emotionally exhausted, so people started getting frustrated and bored. Now I'm a pretty laid back guy and I'm in no hurry to get home, there's nobody waiting for me at the airport except the knowledge that I'll have to say goodbye to all the people I've grown so close to during the last two weeks, so I was getting a little frustrated that everyone was wasting away this last opportunity just being bored and complaining. I eventually dropped some comments to some different people in the least harsh way I could muster, and I think they got my drift. But it just reminded me of how often we go through life waiting instead of living.

So yesterday morning I went for a walk. I never go for morning walks in America, but in Africa it's not uncommon. I thought about how much I live from one scheduled activity to the next and about how much I miss in between. I imagined what it would be like to live in the 'in betweens' instead of in the schedule. I looked up from the ground and glanced around. I hadn't realized how much I was missing around me as I was watching where I would make my next step. I took a deep breath, and took my next step...just a little slower.