Then and Now

Coming to China, I was very sure of who I was and where I was going. I knew what I wanted to do and who I wanted to be around. Where I would take my life seemed to be very clear. I thought that most of the changes were over, and it was now a matter of consolidating everything I've been learning and feeling rather than expanding it. But that was not the case at all. My three and a half months here have flipped everything upside-down. Living within a different culture, being so far from home, having to rebuild myself in a place that I felt totally uncomfortable in, have forced me to go through things and think thoughts that I couldn't have imagined three and a half months ago.

Now leaving China, I am not sure of anything. I'm not sure what drives me or where it's driving me towards. I'm not sure of my own opinions or answers to questions that I could have answered assuredly during the summer. I'm not even sure what I have truly learned here. It certainly was not just Chinese. But I doubt I will come to understand what exactly it is until months or years from now. It's a very lost feeling. And when I come home I am bound to feel even more lost, as I have changed in many ways and those at home may not have changed or changed in their own ways. I will have a new place to miss and new people to miss. I will long for the comfort of a country I am still very uncomfortable in. I will be in the middle of myself, once again, and alone.

It will hurt, but it is not without purpose. I have come to realize this lost feeling is an integral part in better understanding oneself. It's not bad, it's necessary. I am ready to face it. I have learned an enormous amount, and this trip has stirred something inside me that will allow me to learn more when I return.


One thing I know I have learned is that I will not let my life be dictated by my ideals for the future. What will I do with my life? Where will I live? Who are the people I will surround myself with? I simply can't answer those questions right now, and the dumbest thing I can do is try. There are too many variables, which can drastically alter what happens, that I have no control over. I don't even know what those variables are. What is here is now, what is not is not. The career I choose, the person I marry, the place I live in are not things I can meaningfully decide upon right now. I am twenty years old. When I am twenty-two I will be entirely different from this twenty-year-old. When I am thirty, I will be entirely different from the twenty-two-year-old. And when I am sixty, I will be entirely different from the thirty-year-old.

There will be times where I am tired and confused, and tempted to just sit and be absorbed by such feelings. But I hope I will always stand up and keep moving, as that is the only way to expel them. Shutting down keeps those feelings on you and lets them crush you. Facing them is the only way to move them along, and adapt to the inevitable changes or reach a new destination. For now, I can only experience the things that my interests lead me to and work for those that have value to me. That is always the way to fulfillment. And though it may not always be easy or fun, it will always be worth it.

The changes will not stop. But the changes we go through are not something to be fought against or forced, they are merely facts of life and living it. Each change brings new value and new ability. I will accept those changes and apply them as well as I can to my life no matter where it leads.

The lost feeling will never go away forever. But the lost feeling does not last forever. It is because of this lost feeling that we will strive to find a new place for ourselves. And I will be all the better for it and all the stronger for it.

My time in China has roused within me a renewed passion to become a new person and seek new answers. Life will forever throw us into these experiences, and the trips will always lead back to their beginnings. But along the way, we will be fully experiencing what it means to be human, and that is the greatest achievement one could ever ask for.