Soybeans and Adventure

While sweeping the floor this afternoon, I was pondering on a great many things. It's interesting how you can have entire dialogues and arguments in your head -- examining the pros and cons of certain actions, reflecting on a certain philosophical idea -- in a much more elegant, more succinct way, and at a much more rapid pace than you can when you actually try to articulate it, in either spoken words or written on the page (or blog). That fact opens up an interesting discussion about whether language is really necessary for thought, or for the communication of ideas...but that topic is for another time.

As I said, as I was sweeping the kitchen floor this afternoon, I was reflecting on how much I've enjoyed being home. Since coming home from Korea, with its bustling citylife and millions of people, I've come to deeply appreciate the quiet of the small-town life here in Martin. The things I used to scoff at -- the acres of soybean fields inside the city limits, cows grazing in a roadside pasture next to the main street, the small, old-fashioned downtown --I now find soothing and even compelling. What can be more beautiful than the verdant velvet carpet of soybeans against the darker green backdrop of the trees, spread out under the brilliant blue summer sky dotted with towering clouds? More than ever before, I am content with being at home with my family, surrounded by not much of anything and not doing much.

And yet, another part of me misses all the hustle and bustle and excitement of the city. Part of me loves action movies and adventure stories and explosions, and longs to explore an as-yet undiscovered strange new land. What is it about myself that has such diametrically opposed desires? Are all of us made up of these "opposing forces", in a manner of speaking? Because it's not just in this matter that I find myself at odds with myself. Is all humankind striving between two or more forces that pull in opposite directions?