Memories To Move On

If this is supposed to be only a travel journal, I've missed the mark with this entry. It certainly waxes philosophical. I wrote this a while ago but figured that I should post it despite the privacy violation it presents for me. The photo at the end of the post is of my coworkers and I.

As I was relaxing in my posh apartment just before leaving on this trip, it was impossible not to think about growing up. Watching a program on television, there was at the end of the episode a cheesy montage of this prominent character leaving town. I realized that it was appropriate for me, too. My life so far has been a series of good adventures and extended trips away from home, and from all of them I’ve learned a ton. I knew that I would be witnessing my own montage when I left DC. There were thoughts of friends, achievement in school and work, and endless memories of becoming an adult in the city. And the phenomenal woman who persuaded me to capriciously move across the nation? I left her, perhaps for the last time, to come to Paraguay. What I realize is that such change is what constitutes our lives, in the end. We accumulate memories of events occurring in time, and this becomes our essence, our constitution as a person. What we do and have done becomes who we are, in the present tense.

Two things make this a difficult realization for me. First, I suffer from some insecurity about choices I made as a teenager, and second, I hardly believe that people actually get to make decisions about what they will do and who they will be. A very recent example of this came up in the days before leaving for Paraguay: in a conversation about leaving my life in DC, it occurred to me that while I was “making the decision,” a procession of events and my underlying desire to go abroad had brought it on. Someone had seemingly made the decision for me. I am more at ease believing this is the case. Whoever made the decision or however it came to pass, it was simply an event in my life, something that introduced change and opened new doors.

My life in DC for now ended, and if my memories are unaccompanied by nostalgia they will mean more. Good memories shouldn't be accompanied by nostalgia, because that emotion is a longing to have something back, to live it again the way that it was. Feelings of nostalgia only get me in trouble. I watched my montage—saw the places and people that I loved—and considered it a period of life rather than a period being left behind. I understood that I created these memories by living life and passing though time. Recognizing the montage and coming to terms with it enabled me to create the events that will comprise a new one.