I had so many plans for this long weekend. I was going to get up early, start training for the half marathon in September, clean my room, do boat-loads of university related reading... Nothing wrong with sleeping till 12 or so and just watching movies though, right? To my credit I did start yesterday with cycling to the farmers market (and back laden under all my fresh produce, including a gigantic pumpkin. Soon I'll have thighs of steel!) and then made a rice and silverbeet casserole with half of my masive silverbeet. I got the recipe from my new favourite cookbook The New Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen. It's amazing!! And best of all it was recommended to me in the bookshop by a perfect stranger. I love it when that sort of thing happens. Even though it's only a little thing, it's enough to renew my faith in the general goodness of people :)
I've had many faith renewing moments in my life. When I was 14 I was given bus fare by a stranger after I'd thought my friends had stood me up at the gardens and was quite upset. It turns out they were at the other entrance. Oops. A problem easily avoided now with cellphones at least. When I was 20 a couple in a 7/11 in Denmark taxi-ed me home because I'd run out on a party drunk and confused without my coat or bag - an impressively sleazy Dutchman had been putting the moves on me, something I don't know how to deal with at the best of times but after as many kahlua and milks as I had running was the best I could come up with. These are only a couple, something always seems to happen when for a minute my faith is slipping.
Don't get me wrong, I've had lots of shite moments as well. I got denied entry (or exported) from Bulgaria when I was all alone because of my South African passport (or because I had to bribe the guard but was too naive to think of it..). I've also had my fair share of disappointments and hearbreak, and 'battled' through both depression and bulimia. But I think it's how you look at it. I think of the Bulgaria thing as being a positive experience. Not only did I meet lovely people on the train who couldn't speak a word of English (except for kangaroo because that's what they thought the springbok on my passport was when I said I was from New Zealand), I also got to find out I could rely on me to get myself out of situations, and to see Venice for a whole five hours! The sleazy Dutchman could easily have been a bad night for me, but it's now a funny story and even at the time the nice couple was the over-riding thought in my mind (although really, this guy was so impressively sleazy). I've definitely learned a lot about myself and how the human mind works with the whole depression/bulimia thing. I'm my own biggest critic and while I'm learning to be nice to myself, I'm too busy with my own faults to go looking for them in others! I know it's never personal if someone is rude or mean or anything like that, they've got so many things going on in their own lives and minds and nothing makes me happier than to make someone smile, because it is contagious! Though in saying that, whenever a stranger smiles at me in the street I check whether my fly's undone, even though I never wear trousers, but then I smile at myself and the circle of smiles continues! I think it's my fondness for stranger happiness that other people pick up on and then when they're kind to me in even the littlest way it feeds my faith in humanity and then encourages me to continue with my friendly naive view of the world. Maybe that is what optimism is. Or maybe none of this makes sense. Well, at least I feel like I've accomplished something today! Tomorrow is soon enough for real work.
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