Drift Reality > London, England > Settling In

I’ve been in London for just under a month and I am finally starting to feel settled in. I'm experiencing the same phenomenon that I produced a video about when I started settling into life in Korea. Then, the point at which I realized I might actually be adjusting was when I took a trip to the ridiculously crowded Namdaemun market.

The point at which I realized I might be getting to the point where I go through a day without feeling like strangling someone in London, involved delivering a letter from the post office.

That’s it.

I managed to deliver a letter from the post office.

Never mind the fact that the reason I was delivering the letter was to give my bank in the United States permission to wire a student loan I had received from my University in London, which they had received from a US lender, to a bank account I had opened in the United Kingdom, so I could pay my tuition at my University in London. (Don’t even try to make any sense of this.)

The fact that I woke up in the morning with a goal that was heavily reliant on a British institution (the postal system), and accomplished that goal in under a day, means that I’m starting to get the hang of things here.

The fact that there wasn’t a two-hour long queue at the post office was just icing on the cake.

Not only have I gradually begun to become adjusted to the pervasive inefficiency here, but I’ve also started to become adjusted to the fact that I am living in second-world accommodations.

Wasn’t it Buddha who said that suffering is caused by attachment to worldy things? I think there is really something to that although I also think that the Buddha probably never stayed in British student halls; ate in a British student hall cafeteria with a Nazi kitchen staff; and had to walk up and down a filthy crowded British street to school every day, dodging all manners of cars, pigeons, and Brits.

Actually, come to think of it, Buddha pretty much walked around all day barefoot, wearing a sheet and sitting under trees, while people gave him food and listened to him blab.

I digress. My point is that I think throughout the first few weeks of my stay in London I was still attached to the idea of living in a beautiful three-bedroom townhouse in Northwest DC. I was attached to the idea of going out to dinner whenever I wanted, driving to meet friends whenever I wanted, and going shopping whenever I wanted.

Finally, I’m starting to get over those attachments and face the reality of my current situation. I’m learning to accept the fact that things move at a less efficient pace over here – If I want to do laundry, I have to slot out two hours of my day to do laundry because not only will there probably be a line to do laundry, there is also a good chance that the laundry machine will be broken which means I will have to walk several blocks to a nearby Laundromat.

I’m also learning to accept the notion that nothing is a guarantee here – not even something as little as sending a letter from a post office. What might initially seem like an innocuous trip to the post office has the potential to turn into a day-long excursion (which is why I was so pleasantly surprised when things went smoothly at the post office this morning.)

Now that I’ve accepted these things, I feel like my eyes have shifted away from what I don’t have, and onto what I do have.

I spend my days listening to world-renown Professors speak on topics I’m fascinated with; and I spend my evenings reading about these topics, and discussing them with some of the most intelligent students from around the world.

God, I sound like a University shill, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that now that I’ve gotten over obsessing over what I don’t have, I am finally realizing that every day is full of new and exciting people, concepts, and experiences.

And I remember why it was that I decided to come here in the first place.