Body and Soul

My body has been tested on this trip. I have been pushing myself more than I ever have at home with the idea that if I let myself off easy, I will miss out on an experience. We walk everywhere here in Athens, Rhodes and on all the little day trips. My feet will be screaming, my legs numb, my back sore and my shoulders hunched over and pinched but my mind will be pushing for me to keep going. Markelle calls this a ‘cheerleader’. My body has been going through phases jumping back and forth between excitement (when looking forward to something today/tomorrow) and lethargy (towards the end of a long day) and my mind even begins to waiver. Towards the end of a long day, with lots of walking and loaded with fun experiences, my mind begins to slow down and I feel my mind affected by the fatigue of my body.

I also haven’t been sleeping much. Every day I tell myself I will get my blog done early today and I will go to bed before 10:30. Then, I head down to dinner with my classmates, we end up staying there for the entirety of a Greek dinner (almost 2 hours), and I still have my blog to write and my assigned reading to go over. By the time I go to bed, it’s after midnight. I end up getting woken up earlier than I plan and never feeling like I have gotten a good night’s sleep. This trip is both extremely fulfilling and also very tiring. I don’t want to miss a thing so I allow myself to neglect my body’s needs and stay awake. I’ll sleep when I get home. I am also guessing that this is why I have been sick for more than 2 weeks….If I gave myself a full day to just relax and rest, I would have been better by now. But I can’t pick a single moment of this trip that I would leave out simply to sleep. No way. I am nowhere near sick enough to justify that.

I keep thinking that with every ache or pain or yawn I experience on this trip I am learning more about myself, the people around me, Greek culture and being an international citizen. These life lessons are enriching my soul. The things I learn here are changing me as a person and contributing to who I will become-changing my soul. In class we have been learning about how the body and the soul can be ruled over by the mind. A mind which seeks knowledge is a reasonable mind. A mind with reason can reach wisdom and through wisdom, a person is able to become closer to God. So, in a way, all the aches and pains and fatigue I experience in my body are being trumped by the incredible experience I am having, the lessons I am learning, and my mind’s determination to soak it all in.