Borrowed Sanity.

This week I completed my first month in Ecuador, and, in every sense, these four weeks have passed more smoothly than expected. There are, of course, the unavoidable hiccups that come with living cross-culturally, but, for the most part, the transition has been comfortable.  I'm surrounded by the most beautiful of landscapes, an incredibly generous and hospitable people, and 28 other passionate trainees who add life and laughter and friendship to the forty hours of training each week. Most days I feel like I'm working for "Posh Corps" (thanks for the terminology, Jonathan!).

Still, even with everything going so well, I've found that it's impossible to completely quiet my anxious mind. When I first realized I had been in Ecuador for a month, I immediately reacted, "Only 26 more to go!" This from someone who's happy to be where she is. Still, there are just moments when two years feels like an incredibly long time. When I don't think I'm a self-starter who will be successful in my site. When I'm not sure what I think about development or how it should be approached. When the stories of current volunteers incite panic or self-doubt or both. And then it just gets worse when I realize I'm only one month in....and am already having these thoughts. 

On Monday I'll find out my permanent site and the work that I'll be doing for the next two years.  And while that's exciting and will make everything more real, it's also terrifying...because it will make everything more real. Today, while trying to avoid forming expectations or hoping for certain things out of my site, I was reading Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke. And while I highlighted most of it...and would recommend all of it, a couple of pages stuck out. It was just what I needed to be reminded of today, so I thought I would share. 

"For it is not lethargy alone which causes human relationships to repeat themselves in the same old way with such unspeakable monotony in instance after instance; it is the fearful shying away from any kind of new unforeseeable experience which we think we may not be equal to. But only someone who is ready for anything and rules nothing out, not even the most enigmatic things, will experience the relationship with another as a living thing and will himself live his own existence to the full....We have no reason to be mistrustful of our world, for it is not against us. If it holds terrors they are our terrors, if it has its abysses these abysses belong to us, if there are dangers then we must try to love them. And if we only organize our life according to the principle which teaches us always to hold to what is difficult, then what now sill appears most foreign will become our most intimate and reliable experience...So you shouldn't be dismayed if a sadness rises up in front of you, greater than any you have ever seen before; or if a disquiet plays over your hands and over all your doings like light and cloud-shadow. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand, it will not let you fall. Why should you want to exclude from your life all unsettling, all pain, all depression of spirit, when you don't know what work it is these states are performing within you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where it all comes from and where it is leading? You well know you are in a period of transition and want nothing more than to be transformed." 

Thanks for indulging my love of words. I'll update again on Monday with my permanent site information and admit, once again, that all my worrying has been for naught.  

Buenas noches.