Spring Break
Retrospect for Life
A look back on a semester in London
Roderick Scott
Issue date: 11/29/06 Section: Opinion
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It's most fitting that this article is the last the collective "we" hears from my experiences. I've sincerely enjoyed the feedback I've gotten from publishing these random rants and observations over the past few months, and I'm thankful to you the reader for even deeming such ramblings as deserving of your time.
The most reoccurring question I've received is whether or not I've "been changed" by this time away from the comforts of existence, as I knew it. I felt like I was "on one," foaming at the mouth and pen like some crazed anti-establishment zealot in my last piece, so I decided I would take this opportunity to look inward instead of outward to make sense of it all (with that warning, feel free to avert your eyes if such a reflection doesn't interest you…I promise I'll give a damn haha).
I've been taught that a conscious and deliberate change lacks the ethos and credibility of the same done subtly and without provocation. But with this, there are a few things I can't deny since I've been out here on my journey:
I can't deny that I have become the more wiser, more understanding, and more accepting of life's infinite number of possibilities depending on where, when, and how one lived. My third eye once wincing at what could be is now open to what is.
I can't deny that as a result of such a revelation that all of the problems I've let cloud how and why I function are insignificantly trivial in the larger scheme of things.
I can't deny that a passion for life and the unpredictable has been rejuvenated in a world I had created that was beginning to become so trite that it lacked the basic passion for the simple gift of being which will no longer be taken for granted.
But don't call it a change. Call it simply a realization that there is more out there to look to, and that it is this promise of an alternate perspective that now motivates me.
There is no doubt in my mind that I will miss London. I was a Londoner for 4 months: living, breathing, laughing, loving. Not simply as a visitor, but as a person with an address, a job, a life, newfound friends, kick-it spots, etc. They say home is where the heart is, and for sometime it was in this very place.
The most reoccurring question I've received is whether or not I've "been changed" by this time away from the comforts of existence, as I knew it. I felt like I was "on one," foaming at the mouth and pen like some crazed anti-establishment zealot in my last piece, so I decided I would take this opportunity to look inward instead of outward to make sense of it all (with that warning, feel free to avert your eyes if such a reflection doesn't interest you…I promise I'll give a damn haha).
I've been taught that a conscious and deliberate change lacks the ethos and credibility of the same done subtly and without provocation. But with this, there are a few things I can't deny since I've been out here on my journey:
I can't deny that I have become the more wiser, more understanding, and more accepting of life's infinite number of possibilities depending on where, when, and how one lived. My third eye once wincing at what could be is now open to what is.
I can't deny that as a result of such a revelation that all of the problems I've let cloud how and why I function are insignificantly trivial in the larger scheme of things.
I can't deny that a passion for life and the unpredictable has been rejuvenated in a world I had created that was beginning to become so trite that it lacked the basic passion for the simple gift of being which will no longer be taken for granted.
But don't call it a change. Call it simply a realization that there is more out there to look to, and that it is this promise of an alternate perspective that now motivates me.
There is no doubt in my mind that I will miss London. I was a Londoner for 4 months: living, breathing, laughing, loving. Not simply as a visitor, but as a person with an address, a job, a life, newfound friends, kick-it spots, etc. They say home is where the heart is, and for sometime it was in this very place.
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