Simplicity

This process of moving to Europe will no doubt change me in many ways. However, there has been one aspect of my life which I didn't expect to be affected which has been. It should have been obvious but I wasn't prepared for it. I am not even exactly sure how to best describe it. Basically, it is my dealings with time and the passage of time. I expected to be so busy and constantly traveling that I wouldn't have time to be, well, bored. It is an embarrasing thing to be bored for me. I love my family and friends. I love to read. I love to travel. I love to play sports. I like to watch movies and some TV shows. Yet, it is amazing how much time is consumed at home with TV shows, and video games though. TV and video games are not bad things in and of themselves it just how I used them that became a distraction. I know this now, because for one, I don't have video games. I spend so much of my life playing video games because I am terrified of what might happen if I don't have something to distract me from silence, and the mere contemplation of the passage of time.
I don't have TV in my room or a fully functioning internet. I spend my time either reading, writing or talking to my family, and occasionally my friends (it is quite expensive and my parents don't pay for me to talk to them). I only spend 12 hours a week in the classroom. I feel downright guilty to think that there are days when I can't wait for 9:30PM to come around so I can go to sleep and be ignorant of the passing of time while I sleep. I am living in Europe!
This is not to say I haven't done a lot while being here, but it is amazing with all I have done how much time is left. I have been reading on average about 2 books a week. I love it that I get that much time to read, but even reading, I can't believe I am about to say this, gets boring. I have no one to discuss the books with. To fully process what I am reading, I need to talk about it with someone.
I am not complaining either. It is good for me. I speak a lot less which when I do find someone to talk to, has to be good for them. I know I can't talk too much as it is. I am rather long winded on certain subjects, i.e. this one. Plus, I am learning a lot as I do read. One writer who has challenged me the most on this very subject, is Henry David Thoreau. I read about his time at Walden Pond and how he would sometimes spend his entire mornings sitting or lying in the entry way to his house. He only really describes one book he brought to the woods with him, along with some pen and paper. Yet, it is within this book that he writes his famous quote that he wants "to live deliberately and to suck all the marrow out of life." Lying in the entry way to your house seems nothing like what it might mean to "suck the marrow out of life." At least at first glance. But, as you continue to read, I began to go with him on the journey and recognize how much of my life was spent trying to ignore its passing. I lived in virtual worlds of video games and voyeuristic worlds of reality television shows because my life was so boring i couldn't stand to come to terms with it and so I sought distractions. If I did not come here to Europe, I would not have had the opportunity to forsake those things and learn as best I can how to truly life in such a way as to "suck the marrow out of life." I may not live in the woods and so seek to live exactly like Thoreau (I am not convinced he was as consistent as he wanted to be anyway) but I can seek to learn how to live without those distractions. Spend time in the woods when I have the oppurtunity, but most certainly I can learn to live purposefully, which to me is the real wisdom of Thoreau. Live on purpose.