Present

Written on the plane from Denver International Airport to Peace Corps Staging in San Francisco...

Do you ever experience nostalgia over the present moment as if it is already a memory? As if you are looking back on your life as an 80 year old, remembering fondly of the time you were having a seemingly mundane conversation with someone you love, a silent contemplative drive, a gentle cry over a sunrise... looking back with intense nostalgia as if it was the most precious possession you carry in your withering age?

Or do you ever experience this moment with a sense of unadulterated wonder? As if it was the first time you have ever felt a breeze across your face, the way your belly hurts after a laugh too long, the surging sound of a crackling fire, the quiver you feel when someone says I love you with their eyes... like a thirsty child ravenously drinking in the refreshing world like a tall glass of ice water dripping curiously with beads of condensation.

Or maybe you hover above the present moment. Like a omniscient narrator unfolding and weaving your own tale, picking out the similes, metaphors, planting the foreshadows, searching for the characters and settings that build the story into an intriguing and cohesive plot... honorably climbing your story arc, chapter after chapter...

Is it possible to experience these perspectives simultaneously? Ebbing and flowing through your eyes, mind and heart, in and out, back and forth, crashing over each other in sporadic bursts and meditative waves, with the violent inconsistency of a tempest, steady as the tide.

The seatbelt sign dinged, the pilot spoke, and the engines rose with the sun over the Rocky Mountains, turning violet by the morning: My last present moment with Colorado as I sped faster and faster along the range.

The past few months were one of the richest experiences I’ve had in my home state. When almost every day is the last time you’ll be in this place, eat this food, do this activity, see this person... everything carried a heightened sense of gratitude.

And so much to be grateful for:

The love and support my friends and family has given me is truly immeasurable. Gifts of thoughtful shapes and intangible sizes. Words of love and loyalty. A hug can carry so much... I have been lifted up by all of you. And launched into a place I never could have gone alone.  Thank you.

The chance to live every day as though it were my last, with fresh eyes and delicate senses has been a gift on its own precious level. Every interaction carries an extra weight of loving intention and honesty. Every bite of food is a savored symphony; every experience, a warm blanket of home I wrap tightly around myself to keep me warm on my journey. It’s like I’m dying, with all of the perks and none of the messy grief...

Yes, even the strange sadness that naturally comes with leaving the familiar is a gift.  Every light casts a shadow. This too comes with a heightened appreciation. Because while these feelings are harder to swallow, I have realized through multiple experiences of varied intensity that no feelings are ever wrong. Every one of them comes with a lesson... if you are willing to look for it. With much practice, I have learned to welcome these feelings, let them wash over me, and then, in due time, I gently step outside of it, to see why they came. 

I will deeply miss my friends, my family, my favorite foods and drinks, hot showers, air conditioned rooms, long drives, the theatre, my cat, my life... I’ll miss the little details that I won’t even realize I’ll miss until they are gone. This is a good thing. I know this because just as much as I already miss home and in turn, appreciate it just a little bit more (as I have many times in the past), I know now that I’ll also miss the home I have never been to...

I look forward to savoring the last drops of life I will create for myself in Indonesia and to feel the same bittersweet longing for what I am leaving when the time comes to return home. To obtain the same appreciation for the lifelong friends I will inevitably meet in this upcoming week as I do for my closest loved ones from home. To miss foods I have never tasted, places I’ve never dreamt of, and memories I have yet to make.

The lift of the aircraft pulls my heart so deep to where I have no choice but to grab the arm of the practical stranger in front of me whom I just met an hour ago: one of the 63 souls with whom I will share this journey. As she holds my hand with even greater intensity, I lock teary eyes with another Coloradoan Peace Corps volunteer looking back at me a few rows ahead.

Just as I see myself rise higher and higher above the Rockies as a memory, a fresh beginning, and a profound plot point, so I see the three of us amongst dozens of others in a montage of colorfully intimate and memorable possibilities ahead.

Do you ever feel like you are leaving home and, at the same time... heading directly towards it?