come and face the strange...ch, ch...

     It was some time during the awkward getting-to-know-you conversations of the first week that I found myself in a conversation, which went a little bit deeper than “Hi! What’s your name? Where are you from?” I was sitting at a table with Thomas and Sam on the 7^th deck and Thomas said something along the lines of, “I’m scared I won’t change.” Sam and I both knew what he meant because we both kind of sat there in silent understanding after he spoke. I think almost everyone on SAS had the same fear at the beginning. You worry that you will get off the boat in San Diego, the semester will become a memory of “that time you went around the world,” and you will slip back into your life before, the same person you were when you left.

     “Because if I haven’t figured it out after this, there is no hope,” Thomas continued. I remember feeling like he took the words straight from my mouth. When you go around the world, you expect, and others expect you, to come back with something to show for it. A profession. A clearly mapped out plan for the rest of your life. A husband. A wife. A soon-to-be best selling novel. A discovery of Buddhism. Something. And, so, you worry that you won’t “do it right” and will come back with nothing to show for it. 

     A few things happened between now and then, and I don’t mean just to me. For one, we were picked out of our lives at home and transplanted onto a floating dead zone of communication, with no Internet or phones. We learned to have conversations with each other rather than responding to that text we just got or updating our Facebook status. We bonded over things like traveler’s diarrhea in India and eating piranha in the Amazon rather than remembering how drunk we were last night.

      We swam in the Amazon, danced on the Taj Mahal, fed hungry children, and got lost on the subways of Tokyo. We met parents and children, friends and enemies, the wise and the dishonest. We literally saw the world.

      The things we won’t tell you about are the fleeting moments when we went for it when we never would have before, or when someone or something surprised us. Or, those moments when we felt like hugging everyone because…I don’t know, maybe we realized the world really must be a good place. But, also, those moments when we felt disappointed, angry, and lonely because we were let down by the people around us. And, in the end, that is what changed us. What we did not realize at the beginning was that we really did not have a choice.

      I have been home for 3 weeks now and have struggled to pinpoint how I am different. I have felt like no one understands me, I have felt like no one cares enough to listen to my stories, I have gotten angry when my friends and family complain about things like their food being cold. But, all of those things were expected. How is this Sara different from the Sara that stepped on to that boat 4 months ago? I still don’t have that answer for you. Maybe you know better than I do.

      I guess you will just have to take my word for it. I changed. Some things I do know, for sure. I know that years, maybe decades, down the road, I will still be feeling and realizing the gravity of what I have just done. I don’t know what I am going to do this summer, next year, or when I graduate college that will make a difference to my life and the lives of others. But, I know I will figure it out and do it, if it kills me, because it will be what I love and am meant to do. I know that I will meet many more amazing people who understand the beauty of this ball that we live on. I know I have left the boat with brothers and sisters for life, whom I can call upon and rely upon forever. I know I will go for “it,” whatever “it” may be, with everything I have, because anything less isn’t worth it. I won’t let anything hold me back.

      I guess, that is all I’ve got for you, folks. Sorry there's no husband or best selling novel to go with it. Thank you so much for following me on my journey. This world is yours as much as it is mine, so I challenge you to take it on, with everything you have, NOW. I am not a huge fan of ending on a quote but I really think Ayn Rand was onto something when she wrote in her book Atlas Shrugged, "Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swaps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it's yours.” So go for it people. It's yours.

conquering the world.

      A few years back, I stumbled across a quote that read something like, “I feel the need to conquer the world yet I have no clue how just yet.” I aptly posted this in the quotes section of my Facebook and told everyone I knew about it, thinking it was the bees’ knees. It made so much sense. For one, I was an angsty teenager, who wanted feel lost in the world, and, two, I genuinely felt like I had the potential to do something awesome but that I couldn’t, for one reason or another. Years went by, I went to college, met a few people, got a job, became more of a person. Yet, I still felt that, though I had everything I needed, I couldn’t get to that mountaintop, wherever it may be. There was something missing.

       In one sense, you could argue that I conquered the world. I have literally been around the block and back to tell you about it. But, in the sense that my quote means to say it, SAS showed me that the world is ours for the taking. I don’t know how to “conquer the world” any better than I did before I left 4 months ago, and, even if I did, I don’t think I would be able to do it or define it, per se. What I do know is that there is nothing stopping me from trying.

      I met a farmer in Dominca who was in the process of writing a book, a 75-year-old man in Brazil who walks through the Amazon without shoes and climbs trees for fun, a reporter for a radio station in rural Ghana who developed a show based on ‘The View’ because he felt the need for a strong woman’s voice and so many more that I could not name them all. They are “conquering the world,” their world, and, if they can, why not me?
      Maybe Lewis Carroll said it best when he said, "If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there.” Maybe I should just leave it up to the professionals.

rock me mama like a wagon wheel...

Tomorrow morning, we arrive in San Diego. It has been a slow crawl to the realization that this is coming to an end. The final weeklong stretch has been one big “goodbye.” And, then, tomorrow at around 11 A.M. it will all be over. And we will spread out about the country, back into our lives before SAS.

            It is bittersweet. But, bittersweet in a way that I have never known anything to be before. Bitter because this fantastic voyage is coming to an end. And, I can already start to feel it turning into "that dream I had once." For awhile, it was the real world, my life back home, that seemed so distant and far away that it could have been a dream. Now, as home gets closer, the past four months feel like the dream.

always remember to dance.

Yet, still, it is sweet. Sweet because, let’s face it, I have been on this boat for a week since our short pit stop in Hawaii. And, it was 11 days before that that we departed from Japan. Psh. Am I ready to get off. But also sweet because I know that life at home will only be a continuation of the adventure. It sounds cheesy. I know. But, it’s true. It will be hard not to treat weekend and day trips, and days or afternoons, like ports, squeezing everything I possibly can from each second I have there, in that moment. In the same way, it will be hard not to engage with the people around me everywhere that I go, after months of asking about and listening to people’s stories. This semester is over, but the experience is not leaving me anytime soon.  

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