Modern Times: Default World

I am midway through my drive across Canada (from Vancouver, BC to St. John's, NL). I have taken a day to regroup and write. I have only one week left on the journey and have had no time to write or read. I have been driving and having power visits and brief social interactions to do with my concurrent LettuceConnect.ca Harvest Trek 2012 venture.

I have been away from home for over two weeks and returning to it last night was strange. It doesn't feel like home now. Daughter is firmly ensconced in university so she is not here. There are no animals to greet me. My Toronto residence seems to have taken on a temporary quality. And I don't mind. I did enjoy my comfy bed last night and will again tonight before leaving for the east coast of my journey early tomorrow morning. But beds are quite mobile and after camping in the open for three nights in the Rockies and on the Prairies I am pleased with how easily I coped with a nomadic type of existence, even if it was only for a very short time. Being a nomad suits me and although I'd had inklings of this part of my character before the trip I now see how solidly it is part of me. It has bloomed, as it were.

I find this lack of personal emotional engagement to my return to Toronto quite interesting and might just be the most important take away from my trek across Canada. I have little vested in Toronto anymore since friendships cross many borders nowadays. I own just a tiny bit of property. My return to the city was also met by my respiratory system with a permanently slightly congested nasal system. That is another strongly received signal. Perhaps my already compromised state of health might fare better in a location not covered by a thick layer of car exhaust fumes.

In my journey so far I've also had ample time to contemplate life, the universe, and everything (well beyond the factors of 6 and 7 or 42 for you non-mathematician types). I have also faced the reality that my reality is self made. This may sound like a rather obvious thing to some of you more grown up types but I've known for a long while that I'm emotionally less developed than most of my peers.

I have learned that each and every day gives me the prospect (or blank slate) of shaping my reality and this is really quite an astonishing discovery to me.

I am still getting used to the idea and yet a part of me has reawakened too. This feeling of a blank slate is like the resurgence of a long ago feeling. A feeling that was sparked by certain teachers, books and my parents when I was a child. Heroes like Terry Fox running through my hometown in my youth also helped stoke that feeling. My re-visitation of his memorial on Terry Fox Day solidified the reawakening.

In the copious amounts of tears that I shed while at and after visiting his memorial I was left with the certainty that reality is something each and everyone of us shape. And I am hopeful that I am ready, willing, and able to rise to the occasion.