Smoggy LA

It's the last week of Teach For America institute* and I find myself once again thinking about how little I have thought this month. What I needed was a good Charles Dickens style visit from the ghost of Nick past. I would have told myself in inflated Mars Hill vocabulary to "be fully present" despite my circumstances. That "existence is sacred" and to long to get through something is to desecrate a holy thing. He also would have ranted about slowing down and defying the speed of that which is happening around me.

Unfortunately, I was not given this pep talk by my former self. Now I am here, in my dorm room overlooking a city that looks a lot like I feel--smoggy, covered in a haze produced by my own need to go fast. What Los Angeles needs isn't a day of no driving, but rather a new lifestyle. A lifestyle where people reconsider their need to hurry. A lifestyle where people decide to enjoy that which is immediately around them. So it is with me. I need this lifestyle. I need to slow down so that the smog dissipates and I am left with a clear view of this gift of a life.





*A month of teacher training/brain washing/rigid schedules