Hi, I'm Andy and welcome to Radio Headspace, until Wednesday morning.

So a few days back I was chatting with an old friend of mine, a school friend, and no

matter where I've lived in the world, we've always stayed in touch, you know, even before

email we write letters, postcards, whatever, to each other.

And we were chatting about a time when he came out to visit me in one of the countries

I was in, so at the time I was a monk but I was living in Russia, not in a monastery,

I was teaching in a local meditation centre.

And he came out of his, and I'd been there for a few years and look, I don't know if you've

been to Russia.

We've had lots of ideas about Russia.

Personally, I thought it was amazing.

I was always an incredible place and if you take the time to sort of, you know, settle

in and get to know people and everything else, the countryside is really a stunning place.

But like any place, I think if we lived there for long enough, over time, perhaps the more

difficult aspects of it, the more challenging aspects of it, dominate our life or dominate

our thinking.

And look for someone who hadn't grown up there living through winters where it might

be minus 20 minus 30, it took a little bit of getting used to.

And I remember after a while, I started to get in definitely to a bit of thinking that

eh, it wasn't always that enjoyable.

And I started to frame my reference in some way.

And I'd lost a little bit of that curiosity, a little bit of that magic, I would say,

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