This is the final post about my trip abroad. I wrote a large chunk of it before I got home, but have since looked back and made some changes because…
It was written in a layover-filled, 16-hour flight-blur, and terrible.
I think a reflection on the reflection has some merit in this case.
In general, it’s hard not to be sentimental about the whole experience. Not very often does one get to take six weeks near the midpoint of one’s life and breathe, think, and luxuriate in retrospection. We all get stuck in routines, job stress, familial obligations, relationships, social media webs - noise, noise, noise, as the Grinch would say - and the chance to sit in silence for a bit and think about the things that matter, or have mattered, over the course of my life, was really pretty amazing.
I used the free time during the first half of my trip to journal out key things from my first thirty-four years. I wrote down a bunch of memories that were formative, relationships that meant a lot, and ongoing psychoses I’ve picked up through the years. At first I thought I’d put it together to publish, but I think its actual value is simply in getting my thoughts on paper and examining myself. A lot of great things came out - reflections on childhood teachers that meant a lot to me, thoughts on my dad’s death, and a weird realization that Freddie Prinze, Jr. has played an overly important part in the development of my sexuality.
Since I’ve gotten home I’ve continued journaling, albeit in a very different way. Now I wake up in the morning and churn out my thoughts in a notebook. I read about it in The Artist’s Way, a guide on waking up your inner creative self. I literally just got to the part about journaling in the introduction and then stopped reading the book. IT’S THAT GOOD. I found my creative self in the introduction.
I think doing this has been helpful - the past reflections on the trip, and now an ongoing conversation with myself in the present. In the new journal I haven’t really come to any conclusions (although, I did find that one morning I discovered the reason I hate one one individual as I feverishly wrote about them), but it does help strip some of the worry and negativity from my mornings. Rather than stew on the state of modern society when I go on my morning runs, now I just kind of bop along to T. Swift and make up music videos in my head.
The trip’s legacy is more than that, though, especially as I reflect on it two months out. I still haven’t gotten used to the “real world” and work. Someone actually asked me today how the trip was and all I can say was:
“It was great.”
I’m doing my best to actually articulate what that means here, but I find that it’s hard to put into words.
When I left for the trip, I thought it would be a life-changing experience - that I would come back eat-pray-loved, propelled into a new future. But, what I actually found about the experience, was that it occupied a kind of miraculous present. It wasn’t about forward momentum or the future, but about each day, minute-by-minute: watching the sunset, seeing a giant manta ray swim across The Great Barrier Reef, looking at the stars in Milford Sound, or coming out of a forest in a tour bus and seeing a field of golden grasses swaying in the wind.
At home there is the drudgery of the work day, which as an act of survival, we get through by looking forward, to the joy of the evening, the weekend, the next fun thing. But keeping eyes up like that, inevitably sows discord about other things. For instance, you can’t be happy in a job, you have to know what’s next - tomorrow, three years, and five years from today. Looking forward puts me in a mindset of hoping for better continuously rather than enjoying individual moments - a long walk at lunch, getting new snacks in our work kitchen (animal crackers!!!), or taking time to be grateful for the work I do get paid to do.
As I made my way through New Zealand I read The Lord of the Rings. (I thought it was a heady, academic, cool thing to do.) But there was an odd, wonderful magic about it. As I read about the elf forest, Lothlorien, I actually was sitting in a park, golden leaves blowing up around me in the wind. Then in a tense scene with the ring-wraiths, I looked out the tour bus window and saw that we were in a forest filled with fog.
I found that my sabbatical present-perspective spanned to my reading - not looking at the 800 pages of the book I hadn’t read, but savoring each page as I flipped to it - the green virility of The Shire, the crumbling desolation of Mordor.
I don’t know if that does a good job of describing it, but it, for right now, is the best I can do. I looked forward to this trip for years, literally. As the first days unfolded I kept waiting for some kind of grandiose moments, scenes of awe-inspiring beauty. I did see some incredible things, but, in the end, what I remember are the small moments. In the rush of my day-to-day grind at home, there aren’t many of those - I get caught in the drudgery, the self-induced dread that comes with my work routine. On the trip I could be totally present - savoring each occurrence as an adventure.
The challenge then, for me, is to keep the adventure going. To enjoy the simple pleasures of my ordinary life rather than look to a grandiose trip to give it meaning. I don’t have to go to Mordor and destroy a ring to appreciate the deep green Lake Michigan turns during dusk, or how really FREAKING good animal crackers are. The important thing is to be present, looking to the future as one would a sunset - a beautiful inevitability that will come, not something that imposes meaning on a dreary day. I wouldn’t say I came back wiser, but perhaps a little more cognizant, a little less eager to fall asleep and let dreams give definition to my waking life.