Transform
8 September 2005
Monday night, as I returned to familiar territory after my fourth journey to Black Rock City, I was struck again by how much one week can change everything. Burning Man has always been a transformative experience for me -- each year, I've come back a different person. But this time, as I learned more about the extent of the disaster in the South (and about how it impacted the families of some friends of mine), I realized that the world had also changed quite a bit, in my absence. When I caught my first glimpse of San Francisco across the bay from the final leg of the drive home on I-80, it hit me: I will be living a new life in this new place, whether I want to or not.
That's one of the reasons I seek out transformative experiences like Burning Man. Transforming myself -- learning new ways to relate to the world -- is a way of equipping myself to accept and manage change. It's an attempt to grow more perspective, which, I hope, will help me make my life (and, in my more naive moments, maybe even some little piece of the world) a better place to be.