{"id":17638,"date":"2013-08-09T11:12:25","date_gmt":"2013-08-09T15:12:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/?p=17638"},"modified":"2013-08-09T11:37:43","modified_gmt":"2013-08-09T15:37:43","slug":"keepin%e2%80%99-it-awkward-and-living-in-the-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/2013\/08\/09\/keepin%e2%80%99-it-awkward-and-living-in-the-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Keepin\u2019 it Awkward (And Living in the Now)"},"content":{"rendered":"August<\/a> is here. If you\u2019re anything like me, your mind is skipping ahead to that second week of September, when things will change again and you\u2019ll be balancing school, perhaps work, family, and life stuff, all at warp speed.\r\n\r\nThe unknown is a strange thing. Uncertainty makes me at once uneasy and exhilarated about what is to come. When I was travelling through Europe a few years ago, I remember the words of one fellow traveller very clearly: \u201cKeep things awkward,\u201d he said. \u201cYou learn so much when you make yourself uncomfortable<\/a>.\"\r\n\r\nIt took me a long time to figure that one out. I finally understood that it\u2019s okay to be out of your depth, out of your element and rather lost. Not just when you travel, but in everyday things as well. In fact, it can be wonderful for you to throw yourself into something that is a bit foreign to you, where you\u2019ll struggle over words or papers or thoughts or building relationships with the people and things around you. Talk to people you don\u2019t know. Do things you don\u2019t do. See things you wouldn\u2019t normally see. Do it all!!!\r\n\r\n\"\"<\/a>So I did. For a while, keeping things awkward became a bit of a mantra for me in my personal and my student life. Everything is new when you decide to pursue graduate studies! Whole worlds and people open up before your eyes.\r\n\r\nBut I realized something - I couldn\u2019t always dwell in the awkward and the new. That makes for a pretty tense and rather exhausting existence in general. Despite all the newness around me, I needed to find a way to ground myself in things that were familiar to me also.\r\n\r\nSo I read and searched for ways to balance the new and the familiar. And what came at me from various readings and conversations with others around me was an emphasis on present-moment awareness. It seems as though appreciating the present moment and living in it is the magical antidote to feeling uncertain and tense, and the magical recipe for grounding yourself. Who knew?\r\n\r\nThere are tons of ways to be in this world. I think we\u2019re all kind of still learning how. I\u2019m learning to deal with the uncertainties of my life by not settling in too much into where I am (so being ready for the unexpected), but also by trying to appreciate where I am and taking things for what they are.\r\n\r\nI\u2019ll leave you with the following quote from Eckhart Tolle<\/a>, which I read last week, and which opened my eyes a bit:\r\n

The great arises out of small things that are honored and cared for. Everybody's life really consists of small things. Greatness is a mental abstraction and a favorite fantasy of the ego. The paradox is that the foundation for greatness is honoring the small things of the present moment instead of pursuing the idea of greatness. The present moment is always small in the sense that it is always simple, but concealed within it lies the greatest power. Like the atom, it is one of the smallest things yet contains enormous power. Only when you align yourself with the present moment do you have access to that power. Or it may be more true to say that it then has access to you...Anxiety, stress, and negativity cut you off from that power.<\/p>\r\nEnjoy your week, U of\u00a0T. Keep things awkward. Keep things in the present moment!\r\n\r\n-Aziza","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\nAugust is here. If you\u2019re anything like me, your mind is skipping ahead to that second week of September, when things will change again and you\u2019ll be balancing school, perhaps work, family, and life stuff, all at warp speed. The…\n<\/div>
Continue reading “Keepin\u2019 it Awkward (And Living in the Now)”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>
Continue reading “Keepin\u2019 it Awkward (And Living in the Now)”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7204,59,1,70,66,82,67,68,77],"tags":[10904,1248,10914,10915,10918,10916,10917,25506,10829],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17638"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17638"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17664,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17638\/revisions\/17664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}