Looking Back One Year Ago: May 24, 2013

Saturday, May 24, 2014

Here is my reflection for Day 12, Friday, May 24, 2013...

As I begin writing this I am sitting on the train that will carry me to Hamburg this evening. I was debating today whether to take a night train all the way to Stralsund or spend the night in Hamburg. I suppose I will decide that once I am underway and can speak with a train conductor. I would not mind taking a night train if I could have a sleeper unit with a decent mattress. Sleeping upright is most definitely not something I enjoy.

Helgoland was so beautiful…and the time passed so quickly. Today I went to the sauna a second time to reward myself for all the work I am doing, both of a professional and personal nature. I suppose such work never truly does end…but instead changes form.

I was delighted to learn that I will see my aunt Annette and Fiti again this coming week when I visit Berlin and visit with my uncle Heiner for the first time in a very long while. It will be interesting to meet his wife and nine year old daughter. It goes without saying that my uncle Heiner’s life was completely different eleven years ago!

When I journeyed to Helgoland from Borken on Tuesday I noticed many birch trees throughout the German landscape. As I sit on the train and write now I again noticed these beautiful trees through the train window. Every time I see them I recall my memories of seeing them in the Netherlands as well as the ancient association this tree has with rebirthing. It’s so fitting I am seeing them everywhere considering what has been unfolding since I came to Europe.

I had a lovely visit on the return ferry with a massage therapist who provided me a session while I was visiting Helgoland. As with so many people I chose to tell her about the book Zero Limits and how it has influenced me since I began reading it. Telling people about this book is but one way I have chosen to make a virtual daily offering as a means of addressing whatever karma I may have created in this life by the ways in which I failed myself and other people earlier in my life. Though I was exposed to the Catholic Church as a child I am thankful to not have too deeply internalized the concept of guilt. I thus have not wrangled too much with the black specter of guilt. I like to believe we human beings do the best we can…

My consultation visit this morning was informative. You can learn so much when you converse with people…including how little we all really know about much of anything. Whatever comes of this project and my final paper I do not know…but I am happy I was granted this opportunity nonetheless.

When making an offering in honor of my ancestors yesterday I acknowledged that I was open to the possibility of working in Germany if a suitable option should present itself. It is funny when a dream you long had comes true years later…and then you are left with the task of deciding how to proceed with your life when something you had long given up on suddenly seems possible once more.

I am excited about my life now in a way I have not been in a very long while. Life, my dear friends, is very good!