May 26, 2006
I apologize because this is a post I’ve been meaning to write for a long time. I’m not really apologizing to you, because you had no idea how long these ideas have been maturing in my mind, but really to myself, for not stopping for even a second to really listen to my heart and mind for some clues as to some of the self-actualization taking place in the midst of my last transit from Africa to Cambodia, and back again. They popped up here and there, when I was in the shower or just as I was falling asleep, or even during a split-second when I really let myself experience just how amazing and out of the ordinary my life is, and what that really meant. I’m mostly certain that my mind has been afraid of these feelings, or rather afraid, of how big these feelings seemed relative to my limited set of life experiences.
Sure we all saw glimpses of it when I was Walking in Africa and when I was trekking the Terraces to Heaven, but I didn’t mention it [or really let myself hear it] aloud during those day-to-day experiences, like when I found myself on my way back to Cambodia, riding to the Nairobi airport in a safari vehicle with We are the world blaring through the sound system inside. I denied the realization once again a few weeks ago when I casually booked an airplane ticket to Qatar for next week, without stopping for even a few minutes to revel in how unusual that opportunity might be.
I’m not talking about taking my life for granted, because that’s certainly not what has happened. If anything I continuously remind myself how fortunate everything in my day-to-day to month-to-month has been since I began this journey last July. I just make a conscious effort to recognize these fantastic things at a different time entirely, so that the reality of what they mean isn’t as palpable.
Because with this power comes another type of realization, a scary realization: that this life is really a different kind of life than anything most of my friends and family know, and that this kind of life can also course through your veins like a harsh addiction. With that, one is confronted with a “choice” for how the rest of your life will go from here on. Will you indulge in the massive adrenaline rush and endless-adventure cravings that you’ve been treating your curiosity to for the past 11 months? Or will you decide to make your quality of life involving family and friends your priority over adventure, because a life overseas can be fantastic, but often isolated…
I had dinner last night with two incredible people – two people I never would have met from my life before. They were friends of friends of friends, and have also wound up overseas dedicating their lives to helping others – an entire set of people I never would have met if I had not otherwise lived the life of an expat. From where you are currently sitting, you either know these types of people or you don’t, but discovering that there’s an entire set of people with the same upbringing as you or me, yet living an entirely alternate lifestyle with a similar community oceans away is eye-opening.
Call me naïve or inexperienced, even ignorant, but it is what it is. It seems that every so often one of those moments I try to hide away from my heart – from the processing mechanism in my brain – seems to slip through, and I have a momentary realization that what it is, and who I am relative to this world, is becoming slightly clearer.
Through every experience and moment I’ve had since I left US soil nearly a year ago, my purpose and my life in the context of the entire world has become clearer. Before I saw my life through a wide aperture – myself in focus, the rest of the world ablur. It wasn’t egocentric, but my existence and the world immediately around me, was all that made sense – all that could make sense in order for me to feel not only like I had a place in this world, but also safe from how big the world really was. And with every moment I’ve taken myself out of that safe space – essentially anytime I’ve spent more than a few days overseas – that aperture is narrowing, and the once blurry world has become more in focus than my own life. With every plane ride I’ve taken, my own perspective has risen in altitude, and I no longer just see my existence narrow and limited, but as expansive as the world seems from 30,000 feet.
It’s incredible, and it’s incredibly terrifying.
With this change in perspective, the world itself has peeled back like layers of an onion, each day revealing more and more of its enormity and mind-blowing possibilities. At a personal level I’ve been able to actually imagine the parallel life I could live permanently instead of the one I know from back home. And what I’ve been able to see and feel is that this life, is something contagious and something very addictive. And why shouldn’t it be?
In some sense it’s running away from a partial reality – because no matter how you spin it, you leave things behind when you change your life fundamentally (and geographically), things you can choose to remember, or things you can choose to forget, but since your day-to-day is never the same, people get left behind, decisions get forgotten, and some responsibilities fall to the wayside. Responsibility itself is a huge part of this because it can be a relief to leave everything and everyone behind. You have a few moments to breathe before new responsibilities materialize, and usually these – again, in my limited experience – seem less consequential than anything before.
In another respect, the idea that you’re part of a completely new set of people and places, is not only liberating but empowering. Before taking a 6-hour flight from D.C. to London seemed like a big deal – a decision that involved a great deal of planning and thought. Months later, casually buying a plane ticket to Bangkok for the weekend, or to Qatar to visit a friend, feels as though its just part of package, like one of the perks for having only a handful of phone calls with people I care about, or feeling like a gypsy wandering across the world without the concept of a home.
In three weeks I’ll be on a plane back to the United States, I’ll have nearly a month to catch up with friends and family, to receive additional training for the next year of this fellowship, and to somehow process really how much I’ve changed since last July when I boarded a plane to Cambodia. I’ll have time to think about the 10+ countries I’ve had the pleasure of visiting (or transiting through), the risks I’ve taken when I’ve tried something new, put myself in an uncomfortable situation that turned out to be a pleasant surprise, and trusted myself enough to open up and befriend numerous strangers. And, as I share and re-live some of the incredible experiences I’ve had with old friends, who’ve up to Cambodia known everything about my life, I’m sure I’ll be pressed with the question, “So, is this life your future?
And the truth is, I’m really not sure. For the first time in nearly 6 years, I’ve felt on top of the world waking up for work in the morning, and for the first time in nearly 6 years, I’ve felt incredibly detached from the people who mean the world to me. That in itself makes the decision an incredibly hard one, but I also don’t believe it’s that black and white either. Part of me is trying to work out whether I even fit in with this new world I’ve been living, and even that is being clouded by the fear that maybe I do fit in, and instead of staking out the periphery, I need to completely immerse myself into the very unfamiliar unknown.
This is why my mind hasn’t confronted these thoughts directly, and why I’ve chosen solely to revel in the magnitude of my experiences, but conveniently elude their significance. And it all makes sense why it’s become harder and harder to fall asleep at night as my return date approaches, and why my brain has fought so hard for some peace of mind. It was when a friend suggested I finally stop forcing the peace, and instead just listen, that it all came tumbling out.
I expect these thoughts – more of an internal struggle I suppose – will continue to play out for some time to come, but I think by identifying them and truly sitting with it, will I allow myself to be honest about the situation and experience the choices I have. And maybe then, I’ll even allow myself to make the choice that feels the closest to the me I’ve discovered soaring above the clouds.
