Victoria Update: Caps and Plants

I realize I'm keeping a very loose schedule with these posts, but I think that reflects a theme of unstructuredness this trip. There are routines, like the morning coffee, hashbrowns, and eggs (often accompanied by bacon) and the swim nights from Monday through Thursday (except today, which is family day). But otherwise I'm making things up as I go along. Sometimes I do a little reading in French, or watch a movie in French, or listen to a World War I documentary on YouTube. Yesterday I walked a couple of kilometers to Dairy Queen to get ice cream and had some edamame salad at Planet Organic on a whim.

My ninjas this trip have been full of surprises too--which, as I type this, I realize is what ninjas are all about. But my first ninja, intended as a statement of "I am here!" instead turned into a sleepy ninja. The next one, depicted above, was meant to be a recovery, a taking of action. This one would also change its message, however, when Mark noticed that it was "a bit pole-dancey" if you turn it slightly:

I figure that's fine though. Nothing wrong with a ninja willing to flaunt what they've got, I figure. More seriously, this came represent the accepting of mistakes. Because while the ninja ended up being a pole dancer rather than a polearm wielder, I could either get upset about it or I could call it serendipity.

For the most recent cap, I decided to give in and whole-heartedly embrace emotions and other mushy stuff, because even ninjas need mushy stuff now and again:

Yep. That's a ninja holding a sun and a heart while prancing on a rainbow. Some interpretations see the sun as a bouquet of flowers. Still works.

And more seriously, it represents the notion that I've had recently that people need to be accepted and loved for who they are. We place a lot of emphasis on earning things like love and respect and acceptance, but I'm more and more convinced that it works the other way around. People who have emotional support are far more able to get things done than people who lack that support, and our society is unhelpful by emphasizing the reverse, as though love is a transaction to be bought with some kind of correct-enough behaviour. This seems especially important when it comes to self-acceptance and... well, I would say self-love, but I think that would lead to another unintended meaning.