Ch-ch-changes

There have been very few times in my young life where I have embarked on some kind of adventure or enterprise and been aware that that adventure or enterprise was going to change me deeply. Life is more a series of subtle, unnoticeable changes, accented by a select few large, noticeable changes, than a series of leaps followed by long stagnations. Leaving for college, moving to Europe, traveling to India, moving to Los Angeles, being present at both elections of George W. Bush, all of these experiences carried with them some sort of anticipation (whether good or bad), some sort of prior knowledge that after having those experiences I would be fundamentally different as a person in some way.

It’s a precarious, and often uncomfortable, position to be in, sitting on the deck of a ship looking at the horizon ahead, but not being able to anticipate the storms, the sharks, the white wales, that might knock into your ship along the way. And yet, though one may anticipate what changes will come, inevitably, as with any kind of change, the hypothesis are almost always off, not just off, but dead wrong.

I’ve been walking around in this anticipatory stupor for the last few weeks. An odd sense of overwhelming excitement combined with a fluttering nervousness has followed me around as I try in vain to get work done (I should be doing some right now), or do laundry, or clean, or pack. After a year of living like a monk (or well, maybe not totally like a monk) I’ve managed to save enough money to flit off to Europe for the next 27 days.

Unlike scores of American’s before me, I, with my best friend, will be hiking, scootering, camping, and roughing it through Italy and France (with a stop in London to see my beloved Brits). There’s something scary about just going to Europe without hostel reservations or safety nets, but something sort of thrilling about it too. Like maybe, for a few weeks, it’s still possible to live without the comforts of even an apartment that sometimes covers you with brown water or no water, that sometimes is so loud you can’t fathom how the world could create such cacophony. Sure there is something romantic and romanticized about roughing it, but there is also such a deep part of my own humanity that yearns to know I don’t need all these modern luxuries to live a life, to be a full person, that my humanity does not come from my job or my BlackBerry or my car or even my little writer’s apartment, that some part of the soul, no matter what life throws at it, soars in the face of unluxuriousness.

So until next time.

Peace, Love, and a Nine Hour Flight,
Julia