I am ready

After walking a friend home last night I took my time meandering through campus. It finally hit me, I am not going to walk through this place for some time. PLU has been an incredible home these past three years, largely due to its inhabitants. Nonetheless, I got this strange feeling of longing as a passed by red square and saw that awful glow of the neon-blue 'Aquafina' machine from the second-floor Ramstad stairwell. I am really going to miss this place. The comforts it affords especially. I have grown fond of my corner room at Base Camp. Where the sun shines brightly in at 6:3o AM and I still manage to sleep in until 10. I will miss Ingram Hall and the trash cans throughout the building that collect the rain water cascading through the ceiling. The late night FOLFing, the gorgeous September afternoons when it seems like everyone you know is out on the grass, lounging around without a care in the world. I will miss my incredible friends, loved-ones, my Lute family.

This however, is a time for growth. And as I feel the pangs from the myriad of 'good-byes' it makes me want to stay for my friends' sakes. Yet, I know deep in me this is what I need to be doing. Upon PLU's doing J-Term of my first year, I have not forgotten the Explore definition of vocation: 'where your hearts desire meets the world's greatest need.' Something inexplicable, in the depths of me keeps urging me in this direction. Yes, Norway. A cold, small country (pop.) with a political interest in peaceful conflict resolution. At my core I have to understand how a society like this one works. It is inconceivable for we Super-Power natives, a country whose prerogative is helping everyone 'get their way' and not relying on the archaic, 'plop a flag down and its yours' mentality. I want to believe that the model that Norwegians pursue is one more compatible to the hundred's of suffering countries in the world that have found the 'solve it with democracy and capitalism' model inefficient. I want to pursue helping other people live their lives, the way they cultural, language, and surrounding allow - not how Angelina Jolie says they should.

So I am off. Out to live in and explore Scandinavia. See the beautiful fjords og fjellets! Jeg skal finne mange vakert tinger. It is unreal still as I sit here with all my shit strewn about my floor, but by this time tomorrow I might start to get it. I still have many outstanding(see unfinished) PLU projects that I will be working on remotely. I will undoubtedly be using this forum as a chance to synthesize questions and some greater meaning about those tasks and future goals.

My thoughts are rampant and rambling and there is much packing yet to be done. I did however, want to put down in writing, in hope to perhaps better believe myself, that I am ready.