Instructions
With my time abroad, I want to see one new thing every day. This ambition does not feel too daunting while ensuring that I make the most of this precious experience. This desire to maximize my time makes me reconsider how I have potentially squandered massive amounts of time while at home. Almost equally important, I want to write. It is one thing to have experiences, but much of the value comes from how you remember and the memory. I want to protect these experiences from the effects of time. Lastly, I want to explore as much as possible on my own feet: run and walk.
I have run about sixty-five miles since arriving in Oxford. Because Oxford is only about eighteen square miles, one might assume that I would have seen quite a lot of the city by now, but you would be mistaken. I would guess that ninety percent of my time running has been spent meandering in circles around the streets outlined above. The first few days, I deviated from this route. I wanted to explore the city. I craved the feeling that I was maximizing my time here, but running through the busy commercial areas jam-packed with tourists and locals alike proved to be severely inconvenient. I became tired of weaving through crowds, never sure whether to pass on the right of the left, so I ventured elsewhere. I began to favor park trails and quieter residential roads.
We talk endlessly about the global perspective and gaining cultural competency. We want to see the world to see every church and palace, but this small chunk of time running each day has rounded out my experience in unexpected ways. In one context, it is my escape. Alternatively, wandering around neighborhoods and parks has been an exercise in immersion. Leaving our FYSA bubble, I can experience a bite of British life. I am surrounded by moms taking their kids to the park, people commuting home from the office, and food delivery workers whizzing by on their bikes. I aspire to have one new experience every day, and recently many of those have been adding a new small section path to my existing repertoire.
There is something special about the ordinary. We all know that looking into the eyes of a dog who does not hunt or do fancy spins and leaps. Maybe to be house broken and walk politely on a lead is plenty. A dog’s darling face, still but for the slight movement of each breadth, as he lays in absolute peace on the sofa is a beautiful site. It deserves to be remembered. Perhaps, its memory should be more fiercely protected than the likes of any hunting dog: beauty in the mundane.
Sometimes you have to be on a deliberate lookout for the wonder in the world. This exhibit gave viewers the opportunity to be active participants to craft their own experiences in addition to shaping the experience of those you have not met. There is something special about the desire to spread well wishes to those you do not and will not know. It feels tied to the practice of gratitude. The practice of sharing gratitude for others most obviously benefits the person that is being appreciated, but gratitude positively impacts the happiness of the one doing the recognizing. My day was positively impacted by reading the kind words of strangers, but I can only assume their days were improved by the act of doing a kind thing. If not, why would anyone choose to spend their precious time and energy in this manner.
We often have such limited control over our focus and emptions. You enter an experience expecting events to unfold in a particular manner, but they rarely follow the script you created. Sometimes a pigeon appears, and sometimes he is missing a toe. The Ashmolean Museum is a sight to behold. I struggle to imagine people being able to craft a building so spectacular. The exterior has more wonderfully artistic details than I could hope to appreciate in this lifetime, but it still has pigeons. These small pests remind you that this is not actually a story book. Just like pigeons everywhere else, these pigeons try and steal your food and poop on heads. They are almost universally an annoyance of urban life, but when you see one without a toe your day stops for a minute. The same creature an hour ago you wished would cease to exist becomes a poor thing you would not wish hard to in the direst of circumstances. In a moment, the most wonderful building you have ever laid eyes on disappears into nothing because of a little toeless pigeon.
- Things to expand upon: I want to go back to the museum to take better pictures of the front of the museum to include in my college. I also want to go back and contribute to the notes in the exhibit and add an additional paragraph about going back to add a message of my own.
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