Write It Out: Instruction Video
“Before I know it, I find myself in a small Canadian village where Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims are neighbours again, like before Partition. My husband had gotten a job as a high school teacher in Geraldton just a couple of weeks before my arrival, having answered an advertisement in the Globe and Mail. They were desperate for teachers, which is why the interviewer must have said nothing about my husband’s bad leg. We arrived at Long Lac, the closest train station, at seven in the morning, the scent of Imprevu in my armpits, hardly a word spoken between us. A teacher from the school picked us up and drove us to the rented two-bedroom trailer that belonged to the principal. In the car, he tried to make a connection. He had noticed my gold wedding bangles and explained that Geraldton was a gold mining town. How fortunate, my husband told me, that I should be going to a place where gold would always be beneath my feet.”
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The ability to be persistent can be both a blessing and a curse. Sometimes, staying at something – particularly when learning something new – can really pay off. “Practice makes perfect”, they say. That makes sense when the goal has been defined and is absolute. I’m less and less sure about those kinds of goals as I get older. I’m paying less attention to the goal (the destination) and more to the journey. So I may still persist, but it’s a much more loose, much less goal-oriented kind of persistence. Maybe along the way I discover more about myself, or more about what I’m trying to create can teach me. If I’m stuck on trying to “get it right”, then persistence becomes a curse. There’s a balance in there, somewhere, as I’m discovering there is in so many things.
Thoughts? Feel free to share them here.
