A Decade

Exactly 10 years to the day. June 26, 2003- June 26^th 2013. I lived every moment, lived by the joint mantras of no regrets and ‘when was the last time you did something for the first time?’.  I embraced the spontaneity and enigma of life and learned to trust the world and my feet in front of me. I lived in Africa, then Asia. I hiked active volcanoes in Indonesia, glaciers in Argentina, and mountains in China. I jumped out of a plane and dove 30m beneath the ocean as a Dive Master. I ran a marathon in Bangkok, Thailand and spent a week surfing in Costa Rica. I did handsprings behind the Taj Mahal and spun and twirled on the Great Wall of China. I planted rice in the mountain terraces of Vietnam and laid in the grass by a llama at Machu Picchu. I cycled through the Canadian Rockies drinking chocolate milk and whipped cream, started a Little 500 team at IU and raced through Indiana.  I learned to spearfish in the Amazon and had jellyfish fights on the beach.

I worked two jobs simultaneously, started college, earned a full scholarship and two degrees. I discovered international politics on a bridge in Derry, Ireland, and voted absentee in two elections. I watched Obama’s acceptance speech as the sun rose in Ghana and a new African nation survive its first major party transition peacefully, setting  an example for a continent.

 I boated down the Niger River on rippled metal and a prayer mat without food and only great company to Timbuktu. I rode a camel and camped in the Sahara for 3 days. Slept on the roof of mud houses scented by the juice of green onions in Mali. I worked two summers in a vineyard and drank muscle wine on a broken boat in Cambodia.  I crawled in a Vietcong war tunnel and an epically flooded cave in Indiana. I ate gelato in Rome, snake heart and a shot of blood in Vietnam. Got used to goat skulls and chicken claws in soup, sucked marrow from bones, ate alligator down south and what I’m still fairly certain was grilled road kill off the street in Ghana. Rode a gondola in Venice, had picnics under the Eiffel tower, the Louvre, and on escarpments over the sea. I snuck across borders, edited visas, and bribed government officials.  I swam with sharks and rays, had a sea lion pounce on my head and laughed as whales nudged the boat in Argentina. I saw the unearthly blue water of Jiuzhuagou in China, felt the whipping force of Wii Falls, swam in scalding hot springs and icy glacial run off.  Biked the Angkor temples in Cambodia in 40 heat and saw the effects of mass genocide 35 years later. I watched the Ramayana danced in Indonesia, Carmen in Flamenco in Madrid, and Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas. Celebrated New Year in Burkina Faso, Laos, and in Ushuaia, the fin du monde. Attended Christmas mass in a tiny church in Timbuktu, celebrated Songkran and Loy Krathong in Thailand, Feria in Spain, and Holi in India. Dirt biked in Laos, tubed down the Mekong, motor biked through storms and chaos incarnate in Saigon and through monsoon floods in Thailand. Met an African juju priest and rode with him through muddy red streets holding a rolled up cheetah skin, couch surfed with a Chinese astrologer in Beijing and inconvenienced an irate Indiana guru in Jaipur.

 I watched every sunrise and sunset for a month. Took a hot air balloon ride and fell off a cliff.  I helped build a school in southern Texas, volunteered in soup kitchens, Wonderlab, marine parks, IU auditorium, and planted trees. Road tripped to Boulder, Colorado to rock climb, upstate NY to visit my adopted family, Toronto to visit old friends,  Delaware for a music festival, Mississippi, South Carolina, New Orleans,  and all over the Midwest.  I was in incredibly loving relationships for 7 of those 10 years.

I’ve cycled, bussed, trained, planed, hitchhiked, walked, ran, drove, and jumped all over the world and never slowed down. I went to wine festivals and music festivals.  I’ve met incredible people from all over the world and seen the pure and untainted generosity, kindness, and self-less ness. I’ve seen people much smarter and more talented than anyone I’d met before who will never get the chance to share their talents or succeed in life due to circumstances of birth. I’ve fallen in love in seconds and let people leave scars on my soul. I appreciated raindrops in puddles, the clean scent of the air, the coolness of blades of green grass, the pleasure of a smile and the ability of a small compliment to turn someone’s day or even life around. I learned to take the time to listen to everyone, no matter how young, uneducated, rich, poor, hopeful, or depressed because everyone has a story to tell and every person in the world knows something you don’t know. A small child could tell you which type of caterpillar is the tastiest and you would have to agree that their knowledge on the subject is more comprehensive than your own. I made wishes and said prayers, learned languages and how to communicate without them. I learned I don’t need anything in life but my skin and good friends.  Everything else is a bonus.

 I’ve fallen off a cliff, broken a rib, foot, fibula, fingers, and toes. I had scarlet fever and watched my skin peel off to my fingertips and palms of my hands. I threw up on a Muslim in the back seat of a jeep and puked and shit until I blacked out in Benin. I survived and smiled again. I pushed people to try new things and to have confidence in themselves. I taught people how to let go of convention and dance naked in the rain if that’s what they want to do, to embrace life and love it because no one is watching them anyway. The audience is in their head.

 I learned that if you are happy in the moment you are in, every other moment had to have happened exactly as it did, no matter how miserable or painful so you must be thankful for those moments too. I learned that life circles and swoops and loops back on itself until all loose ends are tied up and all endings become beginnings. That all goodbyes are followed by hello’s. I discovered that you can be anything and anyone you want to be and even become a paradox of obvious lies because most people simply don’t give a damn about anyone but themselves- but when you find those that do hold tight and give them everything because they are life’s treasures and they will teach you who you are again.

 I found that everyone you meet leaks into your story and changes you by fractions invisible and undetected, but molds your soul and sets the stage for future moments and decisions to come. That everything you read and see and experience is stored in an endless and tangled tapestry who’s single stitch is unidentifiable, yet holds the other stiches in place. That you have changed the life of everyone you’ve ever spoken too and many others simply through obscure mentions in stories, half-truths, and parables at the dinner table. You have most likely influenced and impacted the lives of hundreds of people- most who you would never recognize and will never meet. Because it is human nature to talk and embellish and emphasize and absorb. I learned that because of this tendency of one life to influence many, that we should always be generous and kind and smile and laugh, hug, and dance and sing and love because they are the best aspects of life and human nature and spread like wildfire. Meet the eyes of one random person, really look at them and smile, give them confidence and snap them back into the world and out of their own heads, memories, and worries of the future and maybe they will smile, shake their heads, admire the sky for the first time today and maybe will smile at someone else, or walk with a bounce in their step. Their bounce, smile, or appreciation of nature might catch someone’s notice and snap them as well until the single smile, a single moment blooms into hundreds and life shines brighter. I learned to squash negativity because it does no good for anyone and how to be strong for others no matter how weak I feel.

I learned to thank everyone who helps me and take the time to explain to friends how much they mean to me the moment I realize it. When I love someone I tell them because it makes both of us happy and does no good to deny or belittle it. I write long letters and send countless postcards because I know how happy these simple things make me to receive and it only takes a few minutes to write something that will put a smile on someone’s face for a day, or even minute. Some people save those simple words for a lifetime. I do.

I learned that life is long if you live every second of it. That 3 days with someone you love can leave you with a lifetime of happiness and a week , a whole week with a good friend is enough time to explore countries, laugh, cry, scream, hug and watch as the complicated intricacies we see in life give way to the most beautiful simplicity imaginable. When you live every second in the present and appreciate it for what it is the seconds become momentous and add up to minutes and hours that change your life. I learned to never spend time dreading the future, it will come anyway and when you live minute to minute everything comes and goes easily and hardships pass with barely a bump. Before you know it you will have survived things that should have broken you down without so much as a pause.

 Everything comes in its own time and way, every experience, every moment changes you and opens new doors and pathways that were invisible yesterday but are irresistible today. There is no predicting the future but you can have faith in the fact that everyone you have met you will meet again and every moment is reflected in another. All threads set down will be picked up to form a different pattern later and there is no such thing as an ending.

June 26, 2013 I sat on the shore of Lake Ontario outside of Toronto and held my best friend as she cried. I put my chin on her head and stroked her hair and gazed at the stars, feeling once again that feeling that been growing for months now, the feeling that something, some chapter is coming to a close. Everything has been rocketing by for years and has kept speeding up until it reached the point where I struggle to keep control. I told people I was coming home for good, that I, for the first time want to settle down for a while. No one believed me. Their doubt was pervasive and even I could barely imagine slowing down, let alone stopping. I even accepted a job offer in Columbia for August . But then I realized that no one knows me better than me and no one has ever been able to tell me what I want or what I need to be happy, so I turned down starting a new life in a new country. I decided to bike across Iowa instead of the continental US and road trip up to Canada to see my best friend in the world and my sole connection to my life in Asia. So we sat on the rocks, tear stained and dry eyed, trying to appreciate all the unsurpassable moments we’ve shared together and trust in the strength of our friendship to survive this one last, currently indefinite separation. The feeling that had been building up as I prepared for my big trip, that loomed larger in China and Vietnam and swelled at the Canadian border as it occurred to me to let my passport, already twice filled, lapse in the upcoming months finally burst into the shocking yet solid and impregnable realization that this is where it ends. The thing that felt like an ending wasn’t just Thailand or couch surfing or travel but the entire incredible, exhausting, beautiful, and epic life I’ve been leading for the past 10 years.

My earring, the metal loop that’s been in my upper ear for 8 years now, never once removed had started irritating me in China. I wondered why I had never taken it out or changed it in all these years. Wondered if I could get it out after 8yrs of salt water, diving, island living, Africa, South America and Central America, Asia and Europe, deserts, mountains, and glaciers. After all, it had survived the biting and nibbling of the boys, the rock concerts and camping, skydiving and everything else. Suddenly sitting with Joy on the rocks of Lake Ontario I knew I wanted it out. It had suddenly become a symbol of a past life that I was leaving behind and I wanted all tokens of it gone so I could begin again fresh. Joy helped me get it out and after a few minutes of work I held a semi loop and a small ball with 2 indents. It wasn’t even a full loop. That earring survived all of that precariously balanced between 2 ends of metal. I circled it in my palm for a while then stood up and sent it spinning into the lake. Relief was instant and flooded through me. Instead of crying I was laughing and felt free. Joy was confused but understood that this was what I had kept mentioning in bits and pieces, confusing even me until this moment. It felt perfect sharing the last moment of my old life with my best friend who has become such an integral part of it in the last year and who understands how my path has wound in upon itself lately. She has been my receptacle for worries, tidbits of wisdom, lessons learned around the way and is the first person I’ve trusted in six years. Feeling confidant and peaceful and calm I walked with clear eyes back to the car with Joy and though we still had more tears to cry the next morning it was okay.

 I cut off my bracelet given to me in October by a priest during the Vegetarian festival in Phuket, the bracelet given to me by the H’mong woman I planted rice with in Vietnam, my dive master watch, my compass that guided me through China, and the hair ties that held my flip flops on during the Comino de Santiago. I packed my old bumper stickered trunk with all my journals, tickets, concert stubs, love letters, certifications, and photos and closed it.

Today I start fresh, begin a new chapter in life, carrying through all that I’ve learned about living in the moment, appreciating the small things, embracing friendship, treasuring friends, sharing smiles, spreading joy, impacting the world through optimism, hope, and love. Listening to everyone’s story, encouraging small steps and giant leaps, finding the beauty in everything and exploring. It’s not that I’m stopping the adventure, I’m just taking a step back to finally repay the world for all that it has given me and share all that I’ve learned and begin to give back all the kindness and generosity I’ve received. I’ve lived enough for lifetimes and now I want to help others do the same, to help people realize that life is what you make it and you always have the ability to change it and start again. That life is something to be treasured, appreciated, respected, and LIVED.