"Always roaring with a hungry heart much have I seen and known..."-Ulysses by Tennyson

This quote strikes me today, as I reread for the millionth time one of my favorite poems.  There is such a sense of adventure and weight and import and ceremony and knowing in the lines of this poem.  And this poem, this line about the hungry heart seeing and knowing rings true for me this week because I have spent so much time with my friends from Peace Corps.  It is truly a privilege to know them all, to watch how they slowly and quietly conquer the world with intelligence, humor, grace, wit and understanding or the desire to understand which is even more important.  It is that desire to understand, to meet others on their terms, if only for the curiosity of knowing what they might be that I think makes a good volunteer and creates compassion.  I am not really going anywhere with this except to say how lovely and interesting they all are because of how interested they are in life.  

I know from my conversations with them and the way I feel myself that we struggle with life here and I think it is because everyday our experience is contrasted against something else which we have seen and known and must think about.  But the reward for this is all the things we get to know about because we seek.