Recently, I caught myself thinking, “I can’t let myself love it here. If I do, I’ll miss it too much when I have to leave.” I have been living in Lima, Peru for two months, and in December I will return to the United States to resume my “normal” college life. At first, life in Peru was scarier than anything I had ever experienced before. For the first time in my life, I was living in a foreign country, for an extended period of time, forced to rely on speaking a foreign language, and I only knew one other person who was here with me. I remember waking up the first morning after arriving, completely terrified of even leaving my room because everything was so new and different and overwhelming. I told myself, “I can do this. I just have to act like I know what I’m doing. I just have to get through this. I’ll be back home in four short months.”
Don’t get me wrong, I was extremely excited to be studying abroad as it is something I have always dreamed about doing. I couldn’t have been happier to have finally gotten to Lima, but I also couldn’t have been more afraid. So, I comforted myself with the fact that I only had to “get through” those four months.
As the days and weeks went on, my scared feelings faded and I found myself completely loving life in Lima. Every day has been an adventure, filled with exciting experiences, new people, and exotic foods. However, once I realized I was loving it here so much, my mind tried to stop me from enjoying it. My head was filled with thoughts about the fact that my time here is very limited, so I can’t let myself get too attached to this place. I thought that if I do love it here, I’ll dread leaving and I won’t feel happy in the United States because I’ll miss Peru too much. Somehow, my mind actually started to numb my experiences for a few days so that anytime something really good would happen, I would instantly think, “but I’ll be gone relatively soon, so I shouldn’t be too happy about being here.”
Luckily, I extinguished those thoughts as soon as I could after just a few days of them appearing. I remembered a quote from one of my favorite TV shows, One Tree Hill. It goes, “Every song ends, but is that any reason not to enjoy the music?” This question was used in a couple of episodes, when one of the characters was facing some sort of situation that undeniably had an expiration date, but they realized they could still make the most of the time they had. Recently, these words have been running through my thoughts as I find myself falling more and more in love with a city and culture that I have a very limited amount of time with.
I realized that, while yes, I will inevitably end up missing Lima a lot when it comes time to leave, that in no way means I shouldn’t let this city steal my heart and let myself enjoy every single minute I have here.
This is lesson that I believe can relate to so many of my experiences right now. As a college student, my life is in an ongoing process of preparing for the future. I know my years in college will come to an end sooner than I may feel ready for. Some friendships I have now will eventually fade as jobs, travel, families, and other commitments will slowly creep into our lives. But, this doesn’t mean that we should stop ourselves from “getting too attached” to anything for fear of the eventual change. We’re not supposed to stay the same forever, but we are supposed to do our best to appreciate what we have while we have it. Our lives will forever be filled with change, and that’s what keeps life an adventure. I believe we should let ourselves fall madly in love with our lives as they are, while having the highest hopes of an incredible future.