Well, here it is: the decompression post.
I've been back in the States for a couple weeks now, and it's finally sunk in that I'm not just on a vacation from England. I'm back for good, and that means a lot. It means that there's a whole group of people whom I will never see or speak to again because our lives are divergent, aside from our brief stint together in the U.K. It means I need to stop saying "cheers," instead of "thank you." And it means that I have to get a summer job and take on my senior year at Gettysburg College. I'll be down in Gettysburg all summer working on a research grant that I've received to do some writing therapy work at Gettysburg High School. I'm also working on getting a job waiting tables somewhere, but pickings are slim.
If I am to offer any sort of introspection on the topic of my time abroad, I suppose it should speak to the fact that I'm a different person than I was when I left. Granted, we're all different people when we wake up every morning. Cells die or flake off (gross) and thousands of new ones take their place without our even knowing it. It's a change that happens when we're not looking, and unless we're reminded, we don't even give it a second thought. Perhaps this is what Shakespeare's Prospero meant when he said "our little lives are rounded with a sleep." We change so fluidly and so constantly that we don't even know it's happening until we wake up one day wearing different shoes, in a different relationship, or in a different country. Whatever change it is that rounds us, however, it is surely nothing we will ever be able to tame. We can't control whether we dream in the 3rd person or the 1st, we can't stop the freight train that's coming when we're tied to the tracks, and half the time we can't even remember that it was a phantom freight train that caused us to wake up drenched in sweat. Such is the way with things that are in motion beyond our complete control or perception. We fathom them, just barely, and perhaps even trick ourselves into thinking that we've touched them, but upon waking, like Prospero's slave Caliban, we cry to dream again.
I do not know all of the ways that I have changed as a result of my time in the beautiful city of Bath, but I do feel like I'm better for my time there. The time I spent abroad involved great sacrifice, both for myself and for others, but for all that was sacrificed or risked, I would like to think that an equal amount has been gained. I haven't done a full, item-for-item analysis of that claim, but neither do I care to. Like many things, it is the case so long as I assert it. To close this portion of my meditation, I would like to pose a hypothesis that has resonated to me ever since my philosophy tutor, Jim Driscoll, uttered it: "Perhaps this universe isn't so much about being as it is about becoming." Let's appreciate our skin cells for the fact that they are a barrier against disease and all sorts of yucky things, but not get too attached to them that we shed tears when they die and slough off. What we are in the process of becoming, that combination of DNA and forces that we cannot fathom, is what we are. It is a process of constant movement that might raise the question of whether all stillness is necessarily an illusion. Think about that while trying to sit completely still.
I would like to thank you all for listening to my stories, both the serious ones and the nonsensical. I am, above all things, a communicator, and it would irk me to think that all I have said has vanished without bouncing off any timpanic membranes or reversing its way through any retinas. Words are symbols, representations, like any image that we see in a mirror, and it would be utterly terrifying to look into a mirror and see nothing. Anyone who reads this is the perfect reflection that I hope to achieve with what I write.
Of course, even though this blog is finished, I will not take it down. I think that I'll leave it up as a memento. It shall stand, gloriously, as a computer generated sequence of zeros and ones that will code the past 5 months of my life until the internet explodes.
There being no good way to end this, I'm just going to say that it's been a pleasure, and that hopefully the pleasure wasn't purely mine.
Yours truly,
Eric
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