what you bring back by leaving

My first post on this new blog, known as BearNotes, is really appropriate. This isn't really a brand new thing, having blogged on LiveJournal, MySpace, and even on Facebook a little bit for the last seven years or so. However, this isn't really going to be a series of notes about how I feel about my feelings and crap like that, or so I hope. Instead, this is going to be more like freelance journalism, with you as a reader hopefully taking in something called perspective and comparing my perspective to your own. I'm not controversial in my thoughts, no radical in the way I believe the country should be ran or in the way I believe certain people should be treated. However, I'm very opinionated and I used to really enjoy making sure people knew what I thought about the world. But I return home after an excursion in Ireland and Scotland that has changed me significantly, and I believe this is an excellent start.

First things first, I knew virtually nothing about Ireland and even less about Scotland. I knew Ireland was very green, very small, proud of their Guinness, and didn't have a strong like for England. I knew Scotland was the home of Rowdy Roddy Piper, the scene for Braveheart, and the home of the kilt and the bagpipes. Beyond that, I knew I was going to delve into something very foreign to me. Yet, when I landed in Ireland, there wasn't much of a language barrier, just some slang I wasn't familiar with, and there was a general welcoming feeling of hospitality. Although the Irish airline Aer Lingus had lost my luggage, I wasn't really worried about anything when I arrived. I had made a friend on the airplane, a quiet gentleman from the northeast named Aran, and I knew that Emily wasn't very far away. Upon arrival, my temporary European life had begun and I did two things I wish I could do now: I let go of my most stubborn ideals and tried to open my mind to a degree it had never been open to. Honestly, it was the best thing I could have ever done.

Without really describing my entire holiday, I basically met a lot of great people who simply treated me as though I had always known them; I saw some great things that a lot of people from Kentucky probably don't get to, such as a 20-feet tall bronzed statue of Sir William Wallace of Scotland; and I was able to share how influential American politics can be on the rest of the world. All in all, I learned. The amount of Scottish, Irish, World history that I absorbed was overwhelming, better than anything you'd read on Wikipedia. But I would say that learning about the people there, learning how they simply took me in and just wanted to know what they know and transversely know what I know--amazing, hard to put into words.

In Edinburgh, I learned something very, very important that I didn't realize I needed to know. I needed to know about myself, which isn't really why I left. I simply left to go see Emily, who had complained about Ireland enough to make me worry about her. I quickly realized that she's alright but that she probably doesn't get to rant enough to release any anger or anything like that. So since I had traveled some thousands of miles, she decided to help me out with my issue, one I didn't even acknowledge until we had a conversation at The Elephant House, a teahouse where J.K. Rowling had actually written the first Harry Potter novel. Neat. Well, within the conversation, I learned I didn't really have my act together here at home. For the most part, I was living a content life without realizing it was really life in a rut. When you live as a bachelor in Louisville, there's two things most of men aim for--money and family, whether they admit to wanting a family or not. Some might call it companionship, love, maturity, but in the end, men want to have the money so they can have the fun and they also want a girl to eventually be serious with. Well, I wasn't necessarily doing either of these things, but I was living and my thoughts dwelled on such pursuits. Emily sat me down and broke it down, diving into why I wasn't really as happy as I thought. Without boring you, she basically helped me become an inspired soul, one who wants to write and one who wants to take care of myself. It's strange how some people know you better than you know yourself, and I can say Emily is one of those people who at least knows what the hell I need to hear at the right time. When I tell most people I'd like to write for a living, they kinda say, "oh, that's nice." That's basically because I've surrounded myself around people who have become complacent and they don't believe it's so easy to do whatever you want. That's the price you pay for living in Kentucky.

In fact, it's very easy to do whatever the hell you want. It's a lesson learned in Ireland, after seeing how big the world is even though at times, it can feel pretty tiny. So I plan to write. Fuck working at UPS much longer, and fuck working in bioengineering. It does make my scholastic career look like a waste of time, but hey, sometimes that's what it takes to know what you want. And in the end, I would love for all of you to feel the same way. I don't know if you can find what you want...maybe you can, but because I'm searching for a certain level of greatness, I know I can't do it in my current position. You may not have to go to Galway or Edinburgh or sit in a teahouse to figure it out, but if you haven't figured "it" out--it being that which drives you to the place you want to be when you're old and reflect on how great your life was--then I suggest you get up off of your ass and figure it out.