Without you my life's gonna be forever Tuesday morning.

Somehow it's already exam week, and I can't believe how quickly we ran out of school days.  For the rest of the school, this is the end of the second term out of three, but for me, it's the end.  Because nobody else is leaving, it doesn't really feel like an end.  All this week and next Monday, the girls have two exams each day.  The girls will stick around for a few days extra, when I hope to teach a workshop on notetaking and lead some arts and crafts as well.  I am also hoping some kind of end-of-term talent show performance will manifest.  I was scheduled to proctor only 2 exams all week, though I was asked to be a substitute proctor yesterday.  This morning I'm lying low.

I've been doing yoga every day for the past five days or so, and it really helps my mental state.  I want this trip to be about being present, but it can be difficult when I have so few tasks to figure out what I'm being present to.  If I can't be peaceful and balanced here, then I never will.  I've been using my time to do a lot of reading, talking with Laura, and thinking.  Reflecting on the meaning of peace, considering the conundrum of the haves and the have nots, and thinking about my own future.  How can I properly wrap up my life in Boston?  What will it be like to be in Baltimore again? Where will I find a job?  I could spend my time here answering these questions, but if I wanted to jump right into that stuff, I wouldn't have come here.  So I'm holding it in tension.

One of the books I'm reading is Peace is Every Breath, by Thich Nhat Hanh.  He writes that we are more than our cravings.  This comforts me: I can get very worried over the things I want for the future, and I sometimes also feel controlled by surface-level bad habits like nail biting and snack cravings.  But none of these defines me or needs to control my actions.  Neither the empty compulsions of the present nor the shapeless objects of the future have much to do with my present happiness. 

One of the lessons of Rwanda is this: take it easy.  Your eagerness and your anxiety only hurt you.  What you want, what you need to do will happen in its own time.