Acceptance

Ronda

This past weekend I went on a Spanish roadtrip. Courtney, Liz and I had decided it was about time to hit up the Spanish wine country, so we found out the most popular town in Southern Spain and rented a car.

After officially becoming a Spanish resident and waiting in line for three hours at the police station on Friday, I bumbled into a bookstore in Malaga. I found a map of Portugal and Spain along with a new book in Spanish by an Andalucian writer and made my purchases. I figured a map would come in handy for a roadtrip. After taking the wrong bus home, I packed quickly to go pick up our rental car.

I promise I'll write about the cities we saw, the people we met, the wine we tasted, the horse show we saw, the flamenco we felt...but right now I'm preoccupied with a thought and feeling I remember from my previous time abroad. I had forgotten what Europe and the Mediterranean taught me before that I was missing in my life and needed to remember.

Traveling to Ronda and Jerez de la Frontera, we winded through miles and miles of countryside and mountains. The city of Ronda itself is perched high up in the mountains, yet its history spans before A.C. (I just realized I wrote A.C or antes de Cristo....the Spanish form of B.C.). I have no idea how people traveled. I was in awe in the car. These cities are built of stone and rocks from thousands of years ago. You literally can see and touch the stones that men laid down before I even have any idea what the world really looked like. Hard labor. Sweat and blood that I was walking on. We also saw coins from B.C. at a museum of Ronda. Currency the people used there. Now I know that these things are obvious, and duh, they happened years ago, but seeing and touching them firsthand makes them so much more real.

The mountains and sea are part of my daily life here, but winding through them to the sights of these ancient civilizations where the culture is so strong, so present to this day, humbles me. God made all of these amazing and beautiful natural wonders on the Earth that have stood and are testaments to the thousands of years that have went by. The ancient cultures have used them to their benefits at times and have been crumbled by them at others. As I said, the combination of these two things humbles me beyond words.

I guess this past weekend made me realize how small I am- how my daily insignificant problems are nothing compared to what the Earth and Mother Nature have stood to testify to. The billions of people that have been part of these ancient civilizations have had problems similar to mine, I'm sure of it, and they have now all passed.

OK so I'm sure you're thinking ummm Kenz, are you OK? But the reality is that I can look at this idea in two ways. I can...

A) Think that there is no point and become depressed because because we are so small and have no control...

OR

B) Accept that this is how it is. Asi es la vida. Stop trying to control things and let them happen. I cannot change the actions of others or what happens to me all the time. All that I can do is live my life every single day to be the kindest and most caring person I can possibly be and attempt to surround myself with similar people while enjoying each day for what it brings.

I choose B.

I think I had forgotten about this acceptance part of life -- Acceptance of Mother Nature, time, others' actions, fate...the list goes on. I guess I just needed some old coins and a European roadtrip through the mountains to remember?

You may agree and you may not, but I feel peaceful and that is something that isn't always easy to come by.

OK update on the fun stuff later. Promise promise.

xoxo

Kenzie Shea