Who doesn’t know what I’m talking about
Who’s never left home, who’s never struck out
To find a dream and a life of their own
A place in the clouds, a foundation of stone
Many precede and many will follow
A young girl’s dream no longer hollow
It takes the shape of a place out west
But what it holds for her, she hasn’t yet guessed
[Chorus:]
She needs wide open spaces
Room to make her big mistakes
She needs new faces
She knows the high stakes
She traveled this road as a child
Wide eyed and grinning, she never tired
But now she won’t be coming back with the rest
If these are life’s lessons, she’ll take this test
[Repeat Chorus]
She knows the high stakes
As her folks drive away, her dad yells, “Check the oil!”
Mom stares out the window and says, “I’m leaving my girl”
She said, “It didn’t seem like that long ago”
When she stood there and let her own folks know
—————————————————————————————————————
I first heard this song back in college (final year), basically the same time when I first discovered Dixie Chicks. Whenever I play my Dixie Chicks playlist, it always brings me back to my thesis days. Their songs kind of inspired me and made me keep going, along with the Japanese dramas (‘Orange Days’ and ‘Honey and Clover’, among others) that I was watching in between experiment and thesis writing days.
I haven’t internalized the lyrics of this song until now…
She needs wide open spaces
Room to make her big mistakes
She needs new faces
Growing up with my grandparents, I felt like I have always been sheltered from the “cruel” world. I remember how my grandma wouldn’t let us go out most of the time when we were kids because she’s so scared that we’d bruise our knees, so I’m almost always just playing at home with my brother (which was a good thing in a way). I even remember playing guns with my brother and later on, WWE and Mortal Kombat on playstation. And when I started high school, that’s when I stopped playing (and being a child), I guess. I’ve grown to be that nice, boring person until I finish college. Now I realize that I regret the fact that I haven’t done so much when I was an undergraduate. I was all focused on my academics (not really focused, but that was all that I was worrying about). I haven’t even gotten myself into any shenanigan of any sort.
After the board exam, I decided to move to Europe. It was a big leap and I’ve passed up a couple of job opportunities because of this. But moving with my family turned out to be good…for a while. But then I wasn’t growing as a person and everything was always the same and felt like being inside a box with boundaries. I believe that the world should be borderless in all aspects. So after a year, I was convinced to take the slot at a university in England, one of my spontaneities where I didn’t know a thing about the place and didn’t even had an accommodation prior to my arrival. Now I know that it’s a crappy place up here, but as a friend said, it’s not about the shittiness of this place but how you make the most of your stay. We should not dwell on its flaws. Instead, we should use every opportunity to meet and learn from people, which I did and am still doing. The good thing about this place, especially the university, is its being multicultural. The university prides itself in having students from over 100 countries, mainly because of its Peace Studies programme. You’ll occasionally meet people from Latvia, Lithuania, Pakistan, Egypt, Libya, America, Ireland, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Poland, China, S. Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Brunei, Philippines, even people from Nepal and Ethiopia (I’ve never met anyone from these countries before), and a looot more!
If it’s a good thing or not in general, I don’t really know, but I always want/need new faces and a new environment every time. You really learn a lot from people and places. I can’t say I’m a changed person, maybe a slightly improved one.
by Hiroshi Tomita @ the UniBradford’s OneWorld event, 29/3/2011
