Benjamin Torello Chaucer
Multi-cultural Healing
Assignment #1
When Story Helped Heal.
I used to get anxious. Not about anything specific just in general.
I would worry about my life, my path and what I was doing. I was
perpetually afraid that I wasn’t doing enough and that what I was
doing, I wasn’t doing right. I would feel that having fun or relaxing
from time to time was not only a waste of time but was cosmically not
allowed, it wasn’t good enough in the grand scheme of things. Because
of this mentality I felt that many of the activities in my life were
not ok to enjoy and subsequently I spent much of my young life feeling
guilty about enjoying myself or not doing anything, waiting for the
one thing that was a sufficiently fantastic use of time. I felt that
in general most things were futile, I wanted to be fighting in a
revolution or doing work, clearly stated by God as being the right
thing.
When I was eighteen I took a trip to Italy with a girlfriend at the
time. We stayed with friends of mine who live there and traveled
around the country, soaking in the ruins and castles, street vendors
and small city streets. We both loved history and were interested in
the ruins of Pompeii, curios about the ancient preserved city
decimated by a volcanic eruption. After a long day of traveling we
reached our destination and began exploring the preserved city. The
tiny streets and doorways were incredible. Paint still remained on
many walls inside buildings and there was still charcoal from bread in
the bakery ovens. Courtyards had well preserved mosaics and fish
pools in which elegant statues stood defiantly in the center.
We tagged onto the back of a tour group and followed as they walked
the city streets, past dye markets and brothels, wealthy manors and
village common space and into the underground steam baths. The baths
were beautifully adorned with ornate carving and paintings and
complete with lockers to hold personal belongings.
As we exited the steam baths we paused and the tour guide asked the
group to consider the fixture just outside the door, asking if anyone
could guess what it had been. I looked at the cylindrical holes
placed in two rows of three, which stood about three feet above the
ground and thought. Patiently the guide listened as several ideas
were tossed about and then, declared; “They are to-go stands, so that
people could pick up some hot food to bring home for dinner after
leaving the steam baths.” I stared, bewildered looking transfixed at
the three thousand year old fast food restaurant.
Here I had imagined a world where the reality that people inhabited
was for some reason vastly different from my own. I had imagined that
the world was changing, drastically and that we were in, or close to
the end times. I had been waiting for purpose, sure that the trivial
moments that made up my life were for some reason less real, than
something else that I had never witnessed. There in front of the
ancient ruins of a drive thru I thought, and realized that what I was
going through was nothing new. That life simply was and to wait for
something spectacular to sweep me away was causing me to miss the very
moments that made up my existence. I realized that what I felt had
been felt before and that my life was not that drastically different
from that of my ancestors.
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"CulturalandTraditionalHealthandHealing" group.
To post to this group, send email to
culturalandtraditionalhealthandhealing@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
culturalandtraditionalhealthandhealing+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.ca/group/culturalandtraditionalhealthandhealing?hl=en
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
