A Small Thanks

 I write this for the Woolman blog because my Woolman Semester has led me to this point of my life. I am married to a wonderful woman and I am happy. I never could have expected to be here now, though I am. I think of life as an expanding mathematical equation. Each aspect, each interaction is a number multiplied or added unto each other to create an equation, but the equation is ever changing and if any one number were to be changed, the equation would be vastly different. Such has been my experience at the Sierra Friends Center. It was by chance that I elected to leave high-school and travel North to live in the woods for four months and learn about the world. 

Sharon and her husband had gone to the John Woolman School. They married and had children and their son named Nate had gone to school with me. He is a very close friend and he’s taught me a lot. For that I’m grateful. One day Sharon and my mom were in our backyard picking persimmons with a long device invented for exactly that purpose. I walked outside and watched them take the winter fruits off the branches and it was there and in that space of time that Sharon told me about Woolman. It is to say, that had I not come outside that day, I may not have attended the semester and I probably wouldn’t now be living in Colorado with my wife, Viktorija. 

I lived with Rowan at Woolman and afterwards he went to University in Scotland and I went to college in my home town. I lived without much purpose or intention, but every so often, a seed of knowledge would bloom forth, planted by the hands of those four months. I visited an old Woolman teacher, Ben, in Lara’s cabin, up in the haunted hills North of Shasta. Ben showed me around the woods, told me to watch the deer and the rabbits and the birds. I saw an eagle fly over my head, I saw two birds, for love. Lara’s dog Eva brought me comfort, an escort on my walks. Each evening Ben and I ate with little conversation and then conversation trickled into us and we talked late into the darkness. The great mother Shasta gathered herself against the wind to the South, and Easterly were the Sierras, a foreboding range, though I cannot say for why.  I went because I had to, I had no choice. I drove myself there in search of a purpose and I returned home without.

The next week I left for Scotland and a job I found through WWOOF. I visited Rowan in St. Andrews and I drove a tractor in the Scottish country side. I left for Ireland to sit in meditation and learn Vipassana for ten days of silence. I came back to Scotland in anguish after sitting the course. Something in me was jolted, my axioms unhinged. I met new friends on the farm and for another month we lived in our small reality. But something pulled me North. A discontentment smoldered in my heart, so I ran from it. I had a friend in Norway and I decided to find another farm to work for there. 

Traveling it does one well to find little while friends. I met many with whom I talked to, embraced and I left or they left and I knew them no longer. My friends in Bjorkelangen, Norway taught me how to play volleyball, how to milk a cow and tend to naughty roosters and I thank them and think fondly of them. 

I met my wife in Oslo, Norway, but that’s a story for a different time. I love her more each day, each second, really. Our lives grow into each other as two trees conjoin. I haven’t found my purpose yet, or contentment with myself or the world. I appreciate the things I have, but maybe not enough. Appreciation gives me happiness, so I strive to appreciate my health and wealth, the bed in which I sleep, the car that I drive. I appreciate more the blessings of my parents, the love as big as the sea they have for me, the affection of my wife. I live near my brother again, we’re both in Boulder and seeing him gives me satisfaction. My wife and I and him are the Colorado family core, our parents Westwards and Eastwards. I write this because I’m grateful for the coincidences of my life, the numbers in my equation that bring me forth each day.