A space to reflect on the university experience and the wider educational journey of life and love.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

A Rocking Weekend

VOCO is the Varsity Outdoors Club at our university, and it is an amazing group to be part of!  For only thirty dollars a year, you have access to all the incredible trips, lessons, and adventures outside in this beautiful region.

This weekend we took off  and did a bit climbing with some spectacular people!  Not only did we get to meet great new friends, climb to ridiculously beautiful heights, jump in a lake afterwards, camp on top of a mountain.....but we had precious time to breathe clean fresh air and take a break from academics.

I really  do believe that university is learning in all sense of the word....as Mark
Twain said, “ I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”  There are some things better learned indoors and some things better learned outdoors.

While I was camping alone in a tent that night, on top of a mountain, in pristine nature, I got a bit scared.  I kept hearing footsteps around my tiny tent and I didn’t know what or who it was.  It got me thinking about how our minds do that sometimes – invent stories.  In truth, I was perfectly safe...but that fear felt so visceral as I was waiting for my mattress to inflate.  That’s because emotions are sensation.  They are our physical response to thoughts, and they are ok.   So many of us feel like we are not in control of our emotions, that they determine how we operate.  I have felt like that too.  The truth is that once we feel them, we can let them pass.   We have to let our emotions pass through us, not try to get rid of them as soon as we can.  As Jung so wisely put it, “What you resist, persists.
Just fyi, those footsteps around my tent were a family of deer, according to a friend who walked by.

I don’t know how I got to talking about that when all I really wanted to do was to let you know I had a beautiful beautiful time with VOCO this weekend.



Thank you for that.  

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