The problem with packing all your bags, booking a flight, and jetting off across the ocean is that, more often than not, you eventually have to do all the same again. In reverse. Jet lag and all. Now, I wouldn’t go so far as to say I fear change, or even that I resent it really. But, at the ripe old age of 19, I must confess that I am a deeply nostalgic person. I miss everything—people, places, snatches of conversation I’m only half-sure ever happened. I even miss things I’m certain never happened but could have, had the timing been right.
Needless to say, this made studying abroad somewhat difficult.
Most people speak of their semesters abroad as beautiful, magical times that changed their lives indefinitely. This is all well and good but they forget to mention later the gut-wrenching realization that it will never happen again. Sure, there may be other flights, future visits, letters and postcards and mementos from the people you used to know. But is anything as beautiful the second time around? And is it supposed to be?
No. The poetry of it all, and the tragedy, is that none of it can last. The experiences, the friendships, the revelations—they all lose their spark if you stretch them too far. A photograph will fade to nothing if it’s handled too often, and these moments are the same.
You don’t lose the memories, of course, or the lessons learned. You may never forget a face. The capacity of memory is astounding; you may well remember the exact number of swans in the river that rainy spring day, or the feeling of summiting the hardest hike of your life. You may create poetry out of the words of a stranger you’ll likely never see again. Memory won’t lie and photographs don’t change.
What changes, of course, is you. The people around you, then and now.
I am not the same person I was six months ago, or even a few weeks ago. My life and the lens through which I view the world are constantly changing, and I am learning that this is okay. Because something ends does not mean it disappears. It’s always there, tucked into a corner of the mind, and I am learning that the difference between memory and nostalgia is the difference between sunrise and sunset-- both beautiful, both symbolic, and, ultimately, both nonexistent without the other. It is okay to miss the sunset, just so long as you realize that the sunrise is not far behind. The beauty of a moment is this—that it is a moment. That it does not last.
Like J.K. Rowling famously wrote, “there are some things you can’t share without ending up liking each other.” My friends and I didn’t knock out any mountain trolls while abroad, or defeat any dark lords, but we shared experiences that can bond people like nothing else. From ice-cold showers to yogurt mishaps to bafflingly strange hostels, for a few months we navigated a shared world. For a moment, a tiny speck in the timeline of the universe, we held both the sunrise and sunset in our palms. Wherever life takes us now, whoever we become, for that moment we were on the same track.
And it was always worth the ride.
