New Balance

October 16, 2012. 3:15pm. Starbucks in Poughkeepsie.

   How does one express the value of an experience? Is it how much the ticket cost? Is it the length of time it took from your life? Is it whatever you can put into words when the experience is over? Somehow, none of these feel sufficient when I try to express this past summer in terms of its value.

   Just as one can sometimes find himself in a rut – find himself mindlessly floating through the mundane actions that comprise his life – I found myself caught in a philosopher’s dilemma of the same nature. I drifted through the thaw of spring in a haze of my own thoughts. This deep contemplation gripped and rooted me in a soil that quickly grew deficient. I thought so much I had no energy to act.

   This is just as dangerous, just as stagnant, as the mundane rut. We are often told that life is about balance and moderation, and I never have been able to quite strike it. I realize it’s been a while since I’ve written and sometimes life just works out that way. Maybe I needed the break. Maybe I got lazy. Nevertheless, this is for all of us out there arching toward that blissful state of balance that we understand to exist but that always seems just out of reach.

   I spent the summer on a beautiful farm seeking health, perspective and a little fresh air. It remains an experience, the value of which I still ache to express adequately with words. It came to me in a time when I needed it most and I imagine it meant more to me than I will ever know. Now I stand on extremely conscious middle ground – looking back over what I’ve done and what it means and  also looking forward to a new balance between thought and action, to a beginning. And I’ll leave you all this week with a quote I found that expresses, in part at least, the value of some of my recent experiences:

“By farming we enact our fundamental connection with energy and matter, light and darkness. In the cycles of farming, we carry the elemental energy again and again through the seasons and the bodies of living things, we recognize the only infinitude within reach of the imagination. How long this cycling of energy will continue we do not know; it will have to end, at least here on this planet, sometime within the remaining life of the sun. But by aligning ourselves with it here, in our little time within the unimaginable time of the sun’s burning, we touch infinity; we align ourselves with the universal law that brought the cycles into being and that will survive them.”

 – Wendell Berry

The River

8:35pm Starbucks in Poughkeepsie.

Last Sunday I spontaneously decided to drive home to Connecticut for the day. It was a beautiful sunny morning and I’d awoken early to drive a friend to the train station, so I just grabbed some clothes and kept going. My father had a gig playing guitar at a local restaurant so I stopped in. And while I was there, he played me a song.

“The River” by Bruce Springsteen is a song that’s recently grown close to my heart. Despite its notoriety, I never noticed this song until I heard my father play it one  rainy night last summer. I sat quietly in the dim bar, mesmerized by the lyrics, the haunting melody, the heartbreaking story of a man who falls in love so young and has to grow up so fast, yet, he always recalls the passions and dreams of his innocent youth.

The man in the song isn’t me but this past Sunday, as I listened to my father play that poignant melody and tell that story, I couldn’t help but reflect. I thought about my own dreams and my own ideas of home. That is, Home with a capital “H,” the idea of home, the feeling I feel when I’m home rather than some specific place. There have been times I’ve thought that people were Home to me. I had dreams and aspirations and ideas about our future and those notions too, were Home to me. Sometimes I even allowed myself the comfortable belief - as long as I’m with this person, I will never feel a deep longing for home because they will be my Home. Perhaps the collapse of that idea is this week’s, maybe even this year’s lesson to me. Just as the world turns, rivers dry up, trees grow and places change, so do people. So do I. It makes you wonder what you can count on if everything is changing all the time. If you can’t count on your places, your people, your ideas or even yourself to remain the same, what then can you really count on?

Isn’t it awfully frightening? It grabbed hold of me like an unyielding current when I heard those Springsteen lyrics insisting on the fallibility of the dreams we hold so dear.

I’m recognizing how deeply I’ve clung to those aspirations, those expectations of myself, of others, of my world, of my relationships. And I’m recognizing that as heartbreaking as it may be to release these expectations, as vulnerable and emotionally naked as it might leave me, perhaps it’s best. Life will dash our expectations and all of those other things we cling to whether we are prepared for it or not. As the song incants, “Now all them things that seemed so important, well mister they vanished right into the air.” It’s so uncomfortable to let go. I do not like to let go. I do not like to feel set adrift. I miss my life rafts – that my home wouldn’t change, that my friends wouldn’t change, that my relationships wouldn’t change. I long for the naive state of being I once occupied.

Yet, at least for right now, I am lucky enough to live on the banks of a river. Like the man in the song, something (some force of God I imagine) often “sends me down to the river.” To remember the ever changing nature of the world, to feel my own smallness and to once again, as many times as I need to be reminded, stand in awe of it all.

Maybe Home with a capital “H” has to remain just that – a concept. Maybe we can’t cling to it. Maybe it changes just like everything and everyone. Maybe our peace can only be found in the recognition and acceptance of its change as we remain awestruck by whatever it is that continually sends us “down to the river.”

Thanks for the song Dad.

Untangling

10:06pm. The Basement of the Marist College Library in Poughkeepsie.

I’ve been thinking about myself a lot this past week – about who I am and who I want to become, about how I handle situations, about how much I think. I’ve been thinking a lot about last week’s blog too. So many people I love called, emailed, and texted to tell me how wonderful they think I am, how much they love me and how deserving they think I am. One person in particular, however, one that I love very much, told me how right I was. How arrogant, how undeserving, how terrible, how selfish. It was tough to hear because as much as I knew these things about myself, as much as I could write them down and post them on the Internet for all to see and comment on, I didn’t (and in ways still don’t) want to recognize them myself. I wanted to kick my own ass and then have everybody who loves me tell me I’d been too hard on myself. I love to be right but I wasn’t prepared to hear someone say I was right about this.

Back in Italy I wrote a post about reaching a piazza in my life and I pondered the extent to which I had allowed my world to shape me as opposed to how much I’ve allowed myself the opportunity to shape my world. It makes me feel like I’ve gotten nowhere to be reexamining this concept 8 months later. But here I am. This is what it all comes down to this week (and probably, to my great displeasure, for many weeks to come). What hurt wasn’t that someone agreed with me about how little I felt I deserved my car and the people in my life. What hurt was that it made me realize the extent to which I allow the feeling of others to shape my world, my perceptions and my actions. And I came to this: for all the self-reflection I do and despite all of these blog posts – I don’t know much about me. I got so hung up on how others would respond, if they would care or agree, that I didn’t take into account how I felt about me. And in the end, I’m the one that has to be with myself day in and day out, so, how I feel about myself matters. It matters so much.

Don’t get me wrong; I still care about everyone else. Their feelings still matter. But I am responsible for me, so I should know how I feel about myself. Even as I write this, I was only prompted to do so by someone else. The fact is I don’t know what I think of the person I am, which is a little sad considering I write about her every week.

Maybe I don’t always think I’m so awful, maybe some of you out there agree that I’m not, maybe you disagree. Right now, this week, I don’t care. I’m just trying to figure out what it is I think about me. There are many people out there who are self-aware. Maybe you’re one of them. Lucky you (and also, bite me – but I love you because you help me know me, but also please stop that). If you’re not one of these self-aware people though, if you are just like me and you’ve been winding your opinions of yourself so tightly around others opinions of you to the point that they are one frighteningly entangled mass, then my advice to us is – perhaps we should stop. It’s really advice to myself (as I have no authority upon which to give advice to others). Life is an ever-flowing, ever-changing river; the people we love won’t always be there to keep us straight. Self-reflection and self-progression, in the end, can only be done by oneself. And it’s so hard sometimes to do things alone. To be alone. But it’s so important and it’s so underrated. I think. Maybe. I’m trying to figure it out.

On Generosity and Gratitude

1:19am. The 24-hour Computer Lab at Marist College in Poughkeepsie.

I normally like to get a nice cup of coffee and sit somewhere calm and beautiful as I write. However, this week I’m sitting in a crowded computer lab with no windows to speak of and no coffee either. This is the sad state of affairs that occurs every semester around finals week. Soon this semester will be over and the whole notion of this school year ending really baffles me. It’s gone so fast and yet it’s gone so slow as well. This a phenomenon I don’t think I can quite explain, the process of this year felt like a million lifetimes but as I stand at the end and look back it’s like a minute.

It’s been an interesting week. I know I always say that but it really always is an interesting week. Maybe it’s just me but life seems to be one constant surprise, you never know what’s going to happen, you never know who you’re going to meet, you just never know (or at least I don’t which is why I live in this state of constant awe at life’s possibilities). Now, I didn’t go anywhere crazy or talk to anybody quite so out of the ordinary. Something did happen this week though and it was sort of a surprise. I got a car from my father. There’s a bit of a story here and anyone who knows me might remember my last vehicle, a large white Ford Explorer with a munched-in front end that all lovingly referred to as “Bessie.” “Bessie” died this past summer (a gas leak was the straw that finally broke that camel’s back) and I shed many tears at her passing. She was like a good friend in an odd sort of way – she got me through some tough times in high school and we had plenty of adventures together all the way through my sophomore year of college. I will always remember her fondly.

That said, my parents and I exchanged many, many harsh words over “Bessie” and have exchanged many more over the subject of cars in general since her death. All in all, it’s really more about the harsh words than the car. But this new car has me thinking about the past, about the old car, about all the harsh words I’ve said, not only to my parents but to my friends and extended family as well and not just over cars. At times I’ve been so truly awful. It’s because of this that I feel undeserving of this new car (and let me tell you it’s a beautiful car). In fact I feel quite unworthy of all the generosity, the friendship, the love. I like to think of myself as a pretty good person but in the face of such munificence I can’t help but wonder a bit, and when I say “wonder” I mean doubt, and when I say “a bit,” I mean a lot.

I guess the point of all of this is to try and express my gratitude in a roundabout sort of fashion. Dad, if you’re reading this I want to thank you especially this week for never getting too fed up with me and for always striving to provide the very best for us kids (yes, I know I’m 21 but I still feel like a kid). And to all the rest of the amazing people in my life – family and friends thank you too. I don’t really deserve a car and I don’t deserve a single one of you. I believe, to my very core, that I have been unbelievably blessed for reasons that are far beyond my comprehension to have you all in my life.

Now this all may have sounded mushy and self-deprecating but I’m very serious. In recent weeks I’ve had little to offer in terms of answers and lessons and this week isn’t much different. All I have is this, some of you out there, like me, may be very, very lucky. If this is you, just don’t let it go unappreciated. Recognize it. And think of it often so that it permeates that period of time that feels like just a minute as you stand at the end of this season and look back.

La Mer

9:54 pm. The Marist Library.

So, first and foremost, I apologize because it’s been a while since my last blog post. It was Easter, life got busy… you know how it goes. However, it’s precisely Easter that I’d like to talk about. I was lucky enough to be able to go out to my grandmother’s house on Long Island and spend the holiday near the beach. It was lovely to spend time with some of my family, my best friend and to be near the ocean. I don’t know if this is true for everyone but life has always seemed simpler to me when I stand next to the ocean. The vastness stretches out before me, the sand is soft beneath my feet, and there’s nothing but salty air and sky. Whether deeply happy, sad or confused, I’ve always found clarity by the water. I don’t necessarily find answers but I can always count on a few deep breaths of fresh air. I think about how waves have crashed on that beach for thousands of years, and no matter what happens to me, the waves will continue to roll up on that shore without ceasing. It’s all very poetic.

This was a different Easter from the past few years. It was quiet. I was asking myself many of life’s big questions, and as of late I have few of life’s big answers. We hunted for eggs and ate pastel colored candies as per usual but that was the stretch of the Easter festivities. Around 10:45am I threw on some running clothes and went for a jog by the bay. About half a mile down this particular beach I reached a familiar estuary. I remembered floating down its stream as a child only to get spit out where the freshwater brook met the saltwater bay, I remembered collecting shells and sea glass and I just took a break from my run for a few minutes and knelt down on the sand. No answers. Just a few deep breaths.

We all have our oceans. Our places of clarity. Some people find it in the woods, some at the edge of a desert landscape, and some on the rooftop of a skyscraper. Often what we need isn’t answers, but space to breathe.

I guess that’s all I have to offer this week. Maybe there are a few of you out there finding yourselves in the midst of some crazy living. Maybe you are boundlessly happy. Maybe you are hopelessly confused. Anyplace you find yourself – I have no answers for you. I don’t even know that I could offer some grand life lesson. In fact, I’m sure I can’t. I do know, however, that I often undervalue that ocean. That place of clarity, and I do mean the actual physical place. I neglect it sometimes. I take it for granted. I stay away too long. All I can say is this, I really needed that ocean. And if you need it too, I urge you to find it. To breathe. We may never get answers. We may never figure it all out. When it’s all said and done though, the waves will still roll up on that shore without ceasing.

Some Kind of Wonderful

1:00pm. Starbucks in Poughkeepsie.

This has been a weird week. I think it has something to do with the weather, last week it was exceptionally warm and sunny so everyone on campus used this as an excuse to skip classes, throw Frisbees and start drinking at noon. But alas, this week we’ve returned to the moderately cool weather characteristic of late March and we’ve returned to our classes and gone through our weekly motions all hoping for another random burst of heavenly summer. Life goes on though and there is no more 85 degree weather to delay writing all of those final papers and despite the fact that I am in my junior year of college, each of my professors has taken ample class time to discuss the ins and outs of paper writing (as if it were a new concept). I usually use this class time to zone out, doodle, and perhaps go on Facebook if there is a computer available. However, my philosophy professor managed to hold my ear, at least for a little while, this past Tuesday.

Most instructors will tell you to write an outline, brainstorm, do research, set down your ideas and decide on the structure of your essay, and then you can sit down and start to write. But not before. Never before. This professor told us something different, he said, “Just sit down and start to write, you often need to start writing to figure out what you actually think, so just start to write and you’ll figure it out from there.”

Now, I can’t say I believe that there are right and wrong ways of writing an essay, or of writing in general. I can say that I appreciate the variety. Also, I can say that I believe the type of process my professor was describing goes far deeper than writing a philosophy essay.

In life we don’t often get time to sit down, make a big grand plan, and then follow it gracefully to completion. I sometimes wish we did, but more frequently I find myself in this river that is life. The water is always flowing, the world is always changing, and so are we (I stole that idea from the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus, I hope he won’t mind). Do we ever go into an experience knowing how we are going to feel at the end of it, or knowing how it will all work out? I don’t. And this is the thought that hit me in Tuesday’s class – you don’t have to know everything from the start, you don’t have to stay the same and you shouldn’t expect others to either.  It’s about so much more than just the damn essay.

I’m not going to stare at my computer screen in this Poughkeepsie Starbucks and presume to have answers to life’s questions. I’m no different from you sitting there reading (but I so appreciate that you’re still sitting there reading). I don’t have it figured out. Perhaps though, as I write, as I live, as you read, as we all embrace the process, we might figure something out. Maybe this not knowing is not so terrible. Maybe it’s wonderful.

 

Sportsgasm

                          (Again, the photo has no real relevance other than it describes the mood)

2:06am. My Apartment in Poughkeepsie.

As you all know, I’m still new to the sports thing, but last week I believe I experienced what can only be described as one thing. A sportsgasm. Now, as much as I would like to be the first person to coin this term, I thought of it, looked it up, and lo and behold it was already on Urban Dictionary – “A period of time when the sheer volume and quality of live sport induces a feeling not dissimilar to an orgasm in you.” It’s may sound crass to some of you out there, but it’s truly the most accurate description of the feeling I had.

My college co-ed Ultimate Frisbee team went 8 and 0 over three days to make it to the Championship Game of the High Tide Tournament in Brunswick, Georgia. The game was as close as a game can get and when the tournament officials told us hard cap was on, we were tied 9-9 (this means next point wins). To top it all off, we were coming out on defense. I imagine this is the type of moment that die-hard sports fans (and players) live for, that moment where everything is on the line and you’re the underdog. Our team pulled the Frisbee to the opposite end of the field (it’s like a kick-off in football…or so I’m told). And then there were five turnovers. That’s right, five. Each time the possession turned I thought, “this is it, this is where it ends.” But then it didn’t… until, on the fifth turnover of the championship point, the disc made it into the hands of my good friend Danny who flung the thing into the end zone where Robbie, one of our senior players, finally caught it. We screamed our heads off, we rushed the end zone, we celebrated like nothing else mattered. It was incredible.

So now you see why I have to use this rather crass term. There was hard defense, delicate offense, endless anticipation, screaming, and pure unprecedented pleasure – a sportsgasm. I have never in my life experienced anything like it before and let me tell you, it was awesome. I’m sure your saying to yourself now, great, good for you but what’s the point.

The point is this: I wanted to tell this wonderful story about this wonderful moment. These moments are often few and far between in life (and if they’re not for you, give me a call, I must know your secret) and so we have to share them. Last week I talked about envy, and the way in which it has the power to consume us if we let it.  This though, this joy, this moment, it had the same power of deep consumption. So just as it is important to recognize your own envy, feel it and address it, it is equally important to relish our joyful moments, feel them fully and be mindful of their power in our lives. There will be time spent on the other side of the spectrum, time spent in loneliness, anger, sadness, envy and what have you. There will be time spent in the middle, time where everything is just ok. The point of this week’s blog is just to be sincerely present and aware in all of our time because we only have so much of it. Whether we are in our deepest woes or high as kites, or somewhere in-between, it’s all okay so long as we don’t let a millisecond of it slip by unexamined or unrecognized.

Just An Old Sweet Song

 

(Disclaimer: this picture has nothing to do with this week's blog, it just sort of describes the mood. Plus my dog is adorable and everyone should know)

5:15pm. On a bus somewhere along the eastern seaboard.

I guess it doesn’t really matter where you go, or what you’re doing, life will always take you on adventures if you’re willing. As you may have noticed by this week’s location, I’m off on a new journey headed down south to Georgia for a huge, week-long, ultimate Frisbee tournament near the beach. Gotta love spring break. (More about this next week)

Since my last blog, I’ve been wondering what I should write about next, but nothing really pertinent came to mind until Wednesday night. It was a balmy 70 degrees in Poughkeepsie this past Wednesday, which of course meant breaking out the tank tops and Frisbees and spending the whole day out on the campus green enjoying the sun. Later on that night, I joined a good friend of mine for some Ben & Jerry’s out on the lawn and we had a good talk. I remembered writing about this same friend way back in Italy. Her name is Kendra and she has just returned from a semester abroad in Senegal, Africa. Since our homecoming she has been a constant confidant. Often, my best friend, Lacey (who went to Italy with me), Kendra and I will sit and watch the sunset together, we’ll talk about school, friends, family… whatever. But there’s something really special about these chats. Lately I’ve been doing a lot of self-reflection, but it’s interesting to see how coming back from abroad has affected my friends who also went away last semester. Lacey seems to have hit the ground running, she’s just so completely in her element with all the new lessons she’s learned, I have to admit (reluctantly) I’m a bit envious. I see it in Kendra also, she’s already naturally outgoing and as she puts it, she “doesn’t do awkward.” Talk about envy.

In the end though, it’s just another opportunity to reflect. I ask myself, is it healthy to be envious of your friends (or anyone really)? Can’t you just be happy for them? Honestly, it’s not like they don’t have problems too. I think the answer is yes. Yes, you can be happy for your friends, in fact, what I’m learning is that you need to be happy for your friends because otherwise you seriously diminish your own chances for happiness. Envy is a thing that consumes the best of us at times, and while I’ve never had any good luck ignoring my feelings completely, they all have their space and place. Envy’s a tricky one though because it’s a feeling that doesn’t serve you or anyone around you. You just waste your energy feeling jealous that you’re not one way when you could be spending it getting closer to being the way you actually want to be. Even if you channel your jealousy into motivation to achieve new things, it seems a tainted motivation. Like you can’t motivate yourself so you rely on the success of others for your own motivation. It all just seems so fruitless when it comes to envy.

So what’s the lesson here? It goes back to what I wrote about Kendra way back in Italy. Kendra’s mom wrote to her in Africa, “It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new.” These were words of wisdom for me in Italy and they are words of wisdom for me still. As I ride these long hours down the eastern coast, they echo like an old sweet song. This isn’t something you deal with when you go abroad (or have any life changing experience for that matter) it’s the way your life is forever affected. Envy masquerades as a place of security and familiarity, but it’s not, it’s just a place of fear and stagnation. The lesson this week (and, let’s be real, many weeks in the future probably) is to be honest enough with yourself to acknowledge that place of envy, but take up the courage that is most certainly within you and step beyond those fearful, stagnant places to the new and unfamiliar road ahead. I can’t say I know what that road will hold, or even just that it will be better, it may not be. All I know is this: better to move on, take new chances and maybe gain the whole world, than to stay so very still, certainly gaining nothing.

When Harry Met Chelsea...

9:15pm. My Apartment in Poughkeepsie.

I watch “When Harry Met Sally” with my best friend at least once a week. The two of us can practically recite the whole thing from beginning to end. This past week we were watching this particularly relevant scene: about halfway through the film, Harry yells at his two close friends, Marie and Jess, a couple just about to move in together, he says to them, “Right now everything is great, everyone is happy, everyone is in love, but you’ve got to know, that sooner or later, you're going to be screaming at each other about who's going to get this dish (holds up a dish and points to it). This eight-dollar dish will cost you a thousand dollars in phone calls to the legal firm of that's-mine-this-is-yours.”

Harry didn’t actually mean to blow up at his friends, he’d recently divorced his wife of six years and then run into her and her new lover in a toy store. Harry was upset and he took it out on someone else when they totally didn’t deserve it. Now, I don’t know about everybody else, but this sort of behavior is definitely my M.O. I get upset about something and then take out my hurt, or anger, or sadness, or frustration on someone else for something that doesn’t really matter. And, if we're getting real honest here I’ve been doing it a lot lately.

I guess it’s good to know that you have a tendency to do irrational things but, frankly, that’s only valuable information insofar as it helps you figure out why you do irrational things and then helps you to stop doing them. That’s the real question of the week – why? Why do I do this? I think it’s because when I struggle, I think having everyone struggle with me will make things easier. It’s an ugly realization, but it’s true. Now, in this particular time and space, I believe I am experiencing some growing pains. I hope that I am always aware and always growing, but realistically I think I go in cycles, and I have periods of exponential growth that can be particularly challenging. The trick, I’m finding, is to recognize the feelings, the challenges, define them and then (this is the tough part) acknowledge and deal with them instead of turning into Harry and letting the hurt, anger, sadness, frustration, or whatever have it’s way with the people around me.

This is all starting to sound very much like a therapy session but that’s not what I want to put across really. I’m not a psychologist, I’m just another person you might pass on the street trying to put my heart on my sleeve. Trying to be real and honest with myself and with everyone else. What I am trying to say is that lately feeling angry, sad, hurt and so on has been an opportunity to attempt to be a better version of myself if I choose to take it.  I’m not saying I always do, I turn into Harry often. I make so many mistakes. But that’s the lesson, that’s the point; I can be better, I have so many opportunities. And that is what Harry meant: If you’re not careful, the second everything stops being happy and lovely in your life you’ll make it about something stupid like a dish and it will end up costing you way more than the thing is worth, it’s much better (though it might be more difficult) to just deal with whatever it is you’re feeling that isn’t so happy or lovely.

Ultimately, I will have to deal with myself either way because I can’t run from me. This is my work. This is my opportunity. And I don’t think I’m alone in it.

On Frisbee and Judgement

1:57am. My Apartment in Poughkeepsie.

I was never really a sports kid growing up so my knowledge of sports in general is highly limited. Sure, I did some summer swim team and little kid t-ball but that’s about it. High school was totally devoid of sports. My parents don’t watch sports on TV and never really taught me that sports had any kind of value. That being said, ever since I got to college I’ve had far more interaction with sports than I ever did previously. Now, in this time of constant reflection, I realize that maybe I missed out.

This past weekend I had the opportunity to play in a women’s Frisbee tournament in New Jersey with a lovely group of women from Marist and SUNY New Paltz. I’ve never played women’s Frisbee before and it was an interesting first experience. We got to the field around 11am and met the girls from New Paltz. Introductions were short and game play quickly got underway, within a few points though each of us had a fitting position on the field and we all began to work as a team. Now, I’m not trying to tell some super emotional Remember the Titans tale here, all I’m saying is that for me, the kid who grew up thinking sports were just silly games with no serious value, it was a new lesson. Sports are so much more than silly games – it’s learning how to be part of a team, it’s finding your best value rather than just doing what you want to do, it’s hard work, it’s sacrifice, it’s losing with your head held high and winning with the knowledge that none of us really does anything alone.

And while I may have turned up my nose at sports way back when, this has been a lesson I’ve been learning since I started college. Don’t ever get too attached to the idea that you know something because life could change your mind. And maybe this is a great thing, maybe the most boring people on earth are the ones who decide to stop learning, the ones who never eat a slice of humble pie, the people that never change.

It’s interesting the way all the different aspects of my life seem to influence and correspond to one another. I went home after the Frisbee tournament and sat in my bedroom for a while staring up at my collage of things from Italy that hangs above my bed. I remembered how I told myself going to Italy would never change me… but it did. I remember saying to myself back in high school, sports are just silly games… but now they aren’t. This week’s life lesson probably isn’t even about sports; it’s probably more about being too quick to judge something and then changing my mind. I won’t lie, I’m a person who has a tendency towards these types of judgments but I don’t think I’m alone and that’s why I’m writing. Whether it’s a Frisbee or a trip to Italy, life changes your mind sometimes and currently I’m learning to just let it do so.

The Difficult Part

3:55pm. My Apartment in Poughkeepsie.

It’s been a long week to say the least. I recently reconnected with a friend I made back in Florence. He’s a special person and it was a welcome pleasure to once again hop on a train and head off somewhere for an adventure. This adventure brought me to Brooklyn (I warned you all that it would not be too exciting). My friend and I got to talking about how life has been getting back from Italy. He spoke at length about tying up loose ends. He told me that after coming back from Italy, he thought he’d hit the ground running and have all sorts of new experience to help him along the way. It didn’t quite work out the way he planned. He got home and realized that all the things he’d left behind were still there and without realizing, he’d left so much of his life open ended, so many things unexamined. And now he had to stop running off ahead and, in his most eloquent words, “clean that shit up.”

I have similar feelings. I never expected to change (which was naïve in and of itself, and now I have to come to terms with the idea that I am at times, naïve). However, I changed, I couldn’t deny it, I was still the same me but I had new ideas as to how I would put that into the world. That’s where it got tough. Coming back to the United States meant being a whole lot more honest with the people I love about who I was, about what I was feeling. And some relationships stood up to this, others I’ve had to let go and many are still a work in progress. At least it’s out there though.

So what’s the lesson here? What do this story and all these discombobulated messages mean? These are the questions I’m asking myself (and apparently I’m not alone). Maybe, there isn’t a glaring explanation for why these things happen, why they affect you the way that they do, or why they have to happen now. Maybe none of those things matter. Maybe what matters is not why but how you take life’s punches as they come. I guess (for this week at least) it’s about tying up the loose ends even though it’s so hard. My mom said to me over winter break, “Chelsea, you can’t expect to go through life and not get hurt and not hurt anybody. Life is not a painless thing, or at least a good life isn’t.” My mom was so right, and so was my friend. I imagine it doesn’t always happen this way for everyone. Some people are so prepared for the way new experiences will affect them and they really do just hit the ground running (these people, as you might imagine, are so annoying). In this instance though, I was and still am, the other kind of person. These new experiences have knocked me to the ground and sometimes that means that you can’t just get up, shake it off and move on without getting hurt. Sometimes you’ve got to stop trying so hard to move on and take time to examine your life, your lessons, your relationships – and then comes the difficult part… “Clean that shit up.”

A Return to Normalcy

My Apartment in Poughkeepsie. 2:03AM.

            Ever since returning from Italy I’ve felt the very real void that was once filled with Sunday afternoon latte drinking and blog writing. As nice as it was, I knew it would end at some point and I was prepared for that. However, I was not prepared for the loss I would feel leaving my travel blog behind. I still have thoughts to share. I still have feelings to process. So, even though the lattes here pale in comparison to the ones in Italy, I guess I’ll just have to keep on writing. I can’t promise my life here in Poughkeepsie will be nearly as exciting as it was gallivanting around Europe but as long as there are lessons to be learned I’ll be writing about them and as long as there are thoughts to share…I’ll share.

            The truth is they tell you very little as to how you will react when you come back from being abroad. Certainly, it has been a whirlwind experience for me. I never anticipated the deep affect this experience would have on me, my whole outlook changed. Mid fall semester I found myself at a crossroads, a piazza if you will, and I dared to step forward, to take a new road. Or at least I thought it was that way.

            I don’t quite know that life works this way. Coming home brings a whole slew of new decisions to make, it’s like driving on a highway and there’s a new exit road with a million possibilities every five minutes that you have to choose whether or not to take. It gets exhausting. I’m guessing that this is the process of figuring out how deeply you want the experience of being abroad to affect the experience of the rest of your life. It’s tough work. Which relationships, habits, preferences etc. do you choose to maintain? Which do you let go? How much are you willing to let go? How hard are you willing to work? These are all questions I’m asking myself on a daily basis and that doesn’t even cover the issue of holding on to the experiences of Italy in a meaningful way. How do you keep those lessons close to your heart?

            Even after all of that, if I could possibly sort out this plethora of questions, I realize something that I imagine I could only come to in exactly the time and space that I did – this process, it never ends. This is the cycle of having life experiences and then moving forward while at the same time holding on to what you learn in the process. It never ends.  So that’s where I’m at this week. These are the pervasive thoughts and I guess it’s exactly the place I have to be.