One year ago I landed in Chicago O'Hare International Airport after living in Germany for an entire year. Dumbfounded, I walked off the plane and didn't realize what had happened in the past year, what I was doing home and who in the hell I was. It was a scary moment. I had spent the year away torn between these two worlds of Berlin and Chicago. Constantly vacillating between them, people, and my feelings about life in general.
I've been back now and sadly feel like I don't have much to show for the last year. I know this is completely false, but some how the back of my mind tugs at me like a small child in the candy aisle. I got my job back, started school again, traveled back overseas and made a lot of new friends. Next month I move into the apartment where I originally lived. I do this with excitement and anxiety, but happy because I know I will feel home again. The last year I've never felt at home. I've always felt like I was floating in this space that was yet to take form. I hope that painting my walls my colors, setting up the patio furniture and looking onto the skyline will bring back some sort of solidity that I have lost in the past years.
When I left, I knew that I would learn helpful things for my future. While I was there I didn't learn them, when I came home, these lessons never hit me. I took an extended break from reality, and returning only slapped that reality in my face like a wet fish. My bearings have returned, and so have my ideas. I realize now what I learned, and am going to share them.
1. I can get through just about anything.
I lived in a farmhouse in the middle of the country with a cold, German woman who insisted that I eat ham and cheese for breakfast. I came down with bronchitis 3 times in 4 months, rode my bike in the rain every day and finally, after 5 months of personal hell...I made it out.
2. I learned the difference between fear, anxiety and intuition.
Many times while I was away, these three feelings would overlap and fight. I would have fear that turned out to be anxiety, and anxiety, which would in fact be intuition. I had dreams about people at home...the ones that came true were intuition...the ones that didn't were most likely fear. These three emotions are very unique and separate, and I truly believe knowing the difference will help me for the rest of my life.
3. Carry your pillow with you wherever you go.
Don't rely on where you're going to have a pillow and make you feel comfortable. It's worth the effort (and annoyance) to bring your own. Trust me.
4. Planning your future is never a real option, you can only set up guidelines and hope that fate doesn't have something else in mind.
I tried and tried to plan out the year, where I would be, what I would do and what would happen to me. All of these plans failed and I was left in this cold reality where I realized what little control I had over my life. It was hard to accept, but in correlation with #2 I accepted eventually and was able to choose what I can and can't plan.
5. You can only go to yourself, others (or things) will not get your away from your own demons.
Many times I reached out to people when things were going wrong, and they were there, but not in the sense I wanted. That real and true sense where you want someone there wholeheartedly and unselfishly, the purest sense of the ideal, is a far fetch when all you want is someone to read your mind. It doesn't happen. Beer doesn't read your mind either.
6. Observe to learn, asking questions only strays from what you could be learning if you just kept your mouth shut.
7. Always try to find the humor in things that make you angry. Of course after you say a couple choice words to yourself. Not getting angry for a short while really only gets you father away from laughing.
***
No comments:
Post a Comment