To get inspired, I think you need, at minimum, two things:
1. An open mind.
2. Surroundings with potential to inspire.
I guess they are both the same thing: It’s all about being open to everything around you having the potential to inspire. If you sit around and wait for people to inspire you, you may wait forever. And even the most interesting places in the world won’t inspire you if you aren’t open to being inspired.
And it’s different to claim you are open to being inspired than to actually be it. I feel that for a while I have been bitching about my university and my professors’ inability to inspire me, but have I really gone out there and been open to being inspired?
When I arrived in England in 2003 for a semester abroad, I was thrilled about the opportunity to be far away from everyone and everything I had always known. Quickly I realized I was placed in the wrong university for what I was originally looking for, which was an alternative reality to where I had arrived from. But, despite that, I remained opened and experienced more than an alternative reality – I experienced a new reality, soaked in wild, new adventures that altered my own reality for good.
When I came to Israel in 2003 for an internship at the Jerusalem Post, I was the most open to being inspired I have ever been. The Jerusalem Post internship was enough, but I think the opening I had created made it possible for even bigger achievements, which sure enough, engaged my entire summer in a series of adventures and created a new outlook for myself for the following year before my aliyah.
Again, when I decided to delay my aliyah from August to December 2005, I felt miserable about doing it for a whole of 2 seconds and then realized I had 5 months to fill. I spent those 5 months with a complete sense of openness; not only did I make loads of cash and learn a lot about my hometown, but I got to pursue a collection of ridiculous little adventures with a few friends who I now miss on a daily basis.
So… here I am again, opening up to everything and anything. I have a day out of classes because of the strike so I’m spending it in the Hebrew University computer labs and libraries, desperate to come up with the right thesis topic to pursue for the coming year. It’s a gorgeous campus with a brimming library, so I suspect I will use that to my advantage for the next year as well.
I also think it’s time to go back to the basics and pursue the little adventures that made 2003 an amazing year and the months before aliyah unforgettable. Those little adventures are what keep me open, keep me inspired, and I haven’t really had a mind-blowing, limit-pushing adventure in a long time.
Whadya got: