Since I finally caught up, today I wanted to find my own style of writing. Describing everything in details can be useful for me to remember but it can also be boring and meaningless for whoever reads.
The day is not over yet and I will probably write down something later even if I plan to spend the evening watching the stars. But I felt inspired. Not by the encounters, Fran’s stories that always revolve around poop or what I did today. Everyday should be a new challenge so today’s challenge will be taking my writing skills one step further.
So I wanted to talk about a quote I have been told today. I was sitting on the edge of the roof of the cabin we are building when I said “I am really afraid of heights, but I like this place. Chilling and thinking here is the best”. I was talking to Jim and he told me “No one is afraid of heights. We are just afraid of falling”. That sentence was mind blowing for me.
Sometimes we think that we know our own thoughts, but I never realized how debatable are all of the things we say to ourselves. You can take what he said literally, like we are not afraid of standing tall at a really high height but falling from there; or we can think about it for our lives whenever we are afraid to follow our dreams or to aim for higher and harder goals because of our fear of failing.
I think failing should not define us and we should not see it like an ending but as a checkpoint. It is easy to say until you actually fail and maybe go even further behind from where you started. We are so used at defining people by the success they have that we often forget that everything we do takes time and practice.
This kind of thoughts would be interesting to talk about with someone, like when this morning I talked about the Canadian school system with Jim who thinks that Ontario is failing its students because of many problems. Many are related to the structure of the school system which is still the same as centuries ago, making it hard for both First Nation people (the natives) and the new Canadians that practice different religions from Catholicism.
After dinner we rowed to the hidden lake where I already went with Jim, Asher and Larry. Now I can stir the canoe very well, so we had a nice ride. We were a bit loud but when we arrived there, we stayed more when the others went back in order to see some wild life. It worked because we happened to see a black bear and we stared right into its eyes for what it felt like an hour. We were between 5 and 10 meters from it and Annika was so scared because she was in the front and bears can swim pretty easily and could have gotten close to us in an instant. The moment was so intense because that was a wild animal, not some kind of zoo captive bear.
We rowed back home pretty happy about it and we also met beavers. We spent like thirty minutes just watching the bubbles coming from below the water surface to pick up where the beavers were. We saw two swimming back and forth like they had no idea what they were doing. Then they would suddenly dive with a great noisy splash.
We took so much time to go back because we would stop rowing every time we saw or heard something. We told everyone about the animals we saw and went back to the office. We have a book about nature and its messages in there, so we read it. Apparently, when meeting a bear you should ask yourself if your judgment is off and really let your unconsciousness come out and manifest to link and understand it. It was surprising to hear that because when we were waiting in the middle of the hidden lake, Annika told us about the way she felt about other people not liking her in her opinion. The beaver instead is a sign for dreams and family (so you could tell I really liked reading its meaning!). So when you actually meet a beaver, you should ask yourself: am I working on my dreams?
So then, what is my dream? What is my inner self telling me? Do I want to be a sports coach forever? I should really take my time and think about this as I am not that young anymore. Now that I can stir boats and canoes, should I work on these questions so that I can stir myself in the open waters of life?
Traveling is so rewarding for your self growth. People, travel more!
Godyl Go! 