Resilency Amazes Me

"Algún día en cualquier parte, en cualquier lugar indefectiblemente te encontrarás a ti mismo, y ésa, sólo ésa, puede ser la más feliz o la más amarga de tus horas"."Someday, somewhere - anywhere, unfailingly, you'll find yourself, and that, and only that, can be the happiest or bitterest hour of your life.” (Pablo Neruda)

With 5 weeks left in the semester and spring in full bloom, I can’t help but glance back and reflect on the distance I’ve traveled. This Chilean adventure has been one hell of a roller coaster. Everything has felt more intense here. Friendships are made much faster as a foreigner, because time is limited and travelers share an instant camaraderie that is unlike anything else.

In “normal” life in the United States, people occasionally go through transitions when starting a new job, moving, or making new friendships. However, traveling abroad has been a bunch of transitional phases strung together: First there was the high of getting to know Chile and everyone in my program. Then, I had to get used to the language, move into a house, and adapt to teaching in a new environment. Later, I went through culture shock and got home sick. In between, I traveled to Peru and Uruguay. Then this place magically became my home. Now as I prepare for my South American travels to Argentina, San Pedro de Atacama, and Patagonia, I’m realizing that it’s time to let go of it all. It’s a struggle, but I’m learning that it’s okay for things to be temporary. At times I wonder if the energy I put into all these things was a waste, but in reality I know that nothing here has been a waste.

A year ago, my biggest fear came true: my dad (one of my best friends in the world) had a heart attack and underwent a quadruple bypass surgery, along with many other health complications. Instantly my world was shattered and something inside of me permanently shifted. I don’t even remember what I was doing for Halloween last year, and it’s my favorite holiday. This year, I’ll be in Argentina living out what will in the future be my glory days. This sharp contrast has help me realize just how far I’ve traveled and changed during this year of challenge. While I may not be completely over what happened last year, I have come to trust in my inner strength, as I have learned to confront my biggest fears, learned to stretch my comfort zone and learned to live in a state of transition. Nothing has been a waste, not even when I stumbled and made grave mistakes. Everything I have experienced since last year has allowed me to live life in the moment, learn from mistakes and find meaning in the chaos. That may sound trite but it certainly is true.

"That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet." -Emily Dickinson

If You Don't Like Things, You Leave/For Some Place You've Never Gone Before

For as long as I can remember, my dad has been telling me “there is no magic age where you become an adult. At the age of 61, I still don’t know if I’m an adult.” Nevertheless, I have been waiting in vain for a magic epiphany; the moment of clarity where I not only know precisely where I stand but also where I am going. Even though I was forewarned, some small part of me expected Chile to give me exactly that.

As another season passes and signs of Spring emerge, a lot of my friends are making concrete plans that include fancy jobs, graduate schools, big cities, and more traveling for their futures. Simply put, they know (or are at least pretending to know) what they are doing after this Chilean adventure comes to its grand finale. In all honesty, I don’t want to compare myself to them or feel pressured to map out my life, because I am not them. (If anything, I more often relate to Dustin Hoffman’s character in The Graduate. He has high expectations placed on him, yet his anxious pseudo-bohemian soul rebels after college because he's in search of something more profound, outside the typical life.)

I am determined to take the road EVEN less traveled that is paved by me and me alone. But some part of me can’t help but wonder and at times obsess about the unwritten future, as I am pummeled with anxiety-inducing questions about my next step .

As I think about where the endless numbered days have gone and where I am head so many questions surface: what have I learned; have I been a good teacher; have I made the most of this experience; am I making progress as an individual; will I fall back into old habits; where have I been and where in the world am I going?

I don’t feel lost as I w(o/a)nder, and I don’t feel found. If anything I feel like Chile has brought me to the lost and found. Being here has allowed me to learn, change, grow, and become infinitely more self-aware and feel more alive than I would have in the US within this allotted time…so in that way I feel more found than I did at the beginning. But I am lost (and at a loss of words) because I can’t articulate those lessons, though I know between thought and expression lies a lifetime. So taciturnly, I find myself ruminating about the ‘lost and found’ or the grey, in-between place where I regularly find myself residing. I just have to regularly remind myself that it’s okay not to know, because there is no magic adult age, and there will never be a magic life plan. I will continue to make things up as I go along. I wouldn’t want to live with clairvoyant visions anyways. Some people dream about buying an Audi, some dream about a life in academia, others dreams about a weekend trip to the beach, and I dream about the process of ambitiously traveling…not only to foreign countries but to a place where I’m evolving, giving freely of myself, experiencing, fearlessly loving, pursing happiness, and making the most of my time in whatever crazy situation that I indubitably will find myself in.

With that dream and goal, I do not want to sound overly romantic, idealist, or naive about my freedom/future , because I am well aware that I am still living the finite dreams of a 20-something year old. Miranda July aptly explained life’s phases: ‘It’s kind of about letting go of that feeling of my 20s, that feeling that I will do absolutely everything, I will have sex with everyone, I will go to every country,’ she says. ‘In your 30s, it’s obvious that a finite amount of things will happen.’ [Then] ‘We’ll be 40 in five years.’ [Next] “Forty is basically 50. And then after 50, the rest is just loose change.’ And then the mid-life crisis often comes brought on by mortality terror.At time same time, I refuse to give in to those stereotypes without a wholehearted attempt to follow my dreams.

"we shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time" T.S Eliot