SeaTac airport, international terminal, the sun is out- in Seattle- in January! I’m sat next to Eric at our gate awaiting boarding. We have at least an hour and I’m hurriedly converting my skein of Kelly green merino yarn into a ball that’s easier to knit from on the plane. The suitcase handle is up, serving as the not-so-efficient yarn holder. A Scottish woman across the aisle watches and sends out a quiet cheer every time I manage to undo a knot – we look up at each other and laugh.
Whist my hands work quickly, my ears wander over the conversations of the other passengers and land on the voices from a group of students at my back. They are headed to various countries in Europe as part of a Semester Abroad. Excited, timid, outgoing, they all manage to find each other and huddle in a growing gang of 20 somethings wearing headphones and backpacks: “Where are you going?” “I am too!” “My friend is going there! I hear it’s amazing!” “I can’t wait!” Their energy is palpable, and I can’t help but think back to a similar day at SFO when I was a mere babe of 16 headed off to Belgium for a year as a Rotary Youth Exchange Student (RYES).
Our travel agents (this was the beginning of the internet, my darlings, and online booking wasn’t yet “a thing”!) organized the entire west coast of US and Canadian, Belgian-bound RYES to meet-up at SFO and travel to Brussels together on the same flight. All of us donning our navy blazers adorned with a few pins from our hometowns and Rotary Districts, we were an easy group to identify. Bit by bit we found each other, and the conversation grew louder and more excited the closer we came to boarding our flight. We exchanged our signature RYES calling cards; black and white with our official photo stating our names, hometown, sponsor Rotary club, and email address. We passed them around like trading cards, eager to know each other, eager to imagine what adventures awaited us in the year ahead, wondering if this card held the name of a person we’d be friends with for the rest of our lives… some of them did!
I sit in a wash of nostalgia before returning to the present. Struck by the juxtaposition of where it started and where I am today. Awaiting to board another flight taking us to an unknown adventure in Iceland.
Travel, to anywhere outside of our habitual routine, is a marvel! It never ceases to amaze me how much I can learn and change, even from just a weekend away to a new place in my own state. I am also equally amazed at how people can share an identical experience and come away from it completely differently. I am reminded of a fellow RYE student who was in the same sponsor club as myself and by and large shared the same opportunities and situations. He railed against the differences, constantly frustrated and upset by them. He kept himself on the outside, at a distance, never fully embracing the experience. Over the year, his French barely improved and he never fully connected with any Belgians. He left that year more resolute in being exactly the same as when he had arrived; that there was nothing to learn from the people and places he’d lived in. I, and many others, took that same situation and embraced it. We became fluent in French, forged many deep connections with people there, and returned home absolutely changed from the day we left. He was miserable the entire year- never invited the discomfort in, to sit with it and make it familiar- and it was a sad waste of an opportunity. Those of us that adapted, struggled through several grueling months until we had mastered the language and started to feel more comfortable with the host customs than our own.
I share this story, not to be a judgmental jerk about the other student, but to demonstrate how powerful our perspective and mindset are in surviving a challenging situation and even thriving in it! Patience is a must; also remembering that struggle is temporary, we will get through it with determination and hard work. We need to be more like water than rock: flow and move through the struggles. Travel always reminds me of this. And the more frequently I go into the unknown, the more like water I become. It’s in those little surrenders of the self when we can truly open ourselves up to growth.
What I hope for those kids boarding that flight into the unfamiliar, is that they invite the foreign and discomfort into their new reality. They become companions with it until it becomes a part of them; making them stronger, more humble, more compassionate, more able to recognize the need for help, more determined to turn the “other” into “friend”. It’s a wish I hold for all of us, today more than ever.
More on Iceland later…
Leave a Reply