You don’t always miss what you expect to. I thought I would travel across the world and miss custard and cheese, the way the mirror shakes on my car as I drive down the road, the smell of my house, being able to run with Lake Michigan by my side to cheer me on, and spending time my family and friends, but what I never realized was all the things I took for granted. I never thought to appreciate having garbage cans in every bathroom or having toilet paper. Just the same, I never thought that I would have to miss bathrooms with soap or bathrooms with soap that isn't so watered down that it's not really soap. I never appreciated having napkins and paper towel that isn’t actually toilet paper and being able to drink straight from the sink.
In America, I didn’t appreciate showers that don’t leave the entire bathroom floor soaked and that phones are not to be answered at the dinner table. I was so wrapped up in my own thoughts and bias that I never considered that other places might do these specific things differently. I did know that there would be differences in culture. I was prepared for that, but I don’t think you’re ever as prepared as you think you are, and it’s the little things that surprise you.
Going to temple and taking off your shoes before entering a room, those things I expected, but it’s the things like having water bottles are impossible to open and not understanding a joke because of the difference in humor that tend to catch me off guard. Even though I do miss these insignificant seeming things that I carelessly didn’t think I would need to, they don’t even begin to compare to what I miss the most.
It’s so strange to travel 8,362 miles across the world to have the one thing that you miss the most be something that no longer exists. It’s something that I think everyone misses slightly as they move on to a new stage in their life, so it’s not something that I had to travel anywhere to miss, yet being away makes me miss it more. What I miss is the past. I miss jamming out to T Swift’s Bad Blood every single time we went off campus for lunch and eating terrible Manitowish food that somehow seemed to taste like it was a 5 star meal because of our exhaustion. I miss the way we used to spend every spare second of Freshman year in a practice room, and I miss the driven, goofy people that we used to be because even in the three short weeks that I’ve been in Thailand and my friends have all started their new adventures in college, I know we’ve all changed, so I miss what I can never get back.
I recognize that these places, experiences, and people are very alive in my memories and the memories of those who’ve shared these experiences, but in the words of Tennessee Williams, memory is “nonrealistic. Memory takes a lot of poetic license. It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart.” So maybe what I’m doing is wearing a pair of rose-colored glasses as I look at the past, idealizing it in all its glory, putting it on a pedestal. Maybe it’s because the people who I spent time with prior to my time in Thailand were so truly unique and incredibly kind that they’ve made a great dent on my heart and made the emotional value of the memories that I share with them immense.
My memories of them and with them are so strong and happy because of the pure emotion that we shared as we were unabashedly ourselves. We were all okay in being who we were, and as we grow up, things change, and we can try to stand in the same river but the water that flows past us will be different. We all must choose a path and live our lives separately, not to say that we won’t meet again, but we will never again have exactly what we had before, so cherish the past, but don’t live in it. Let the memories flow through you and make you a better person in all your current and future actions. Cherish those memories of the “good times” as biased as they may be, and let our unapologetically authentic selves live in notoriety.
Sam
In America, I didn’t appreciate showers that don’t leave the entire bathroom floor soaked and that phones are not to be answered at the dinner table. I was so wrapped up in my own thoughts and bias that I never considered that other places might do these specific things differently. I did know that there would be differences in culture. I was prepared for that, but I don’t think you’re ever as prepared as you think you are, and it’s the little things that surprise you.
Going to temple and taking off your shoes before entering a room, those things I expected, but it’s the things like having water bottles are impossible to open and not understanding a joke because of the difference in humor that tend to catch me off guard. Even though I do miss these insignificant seeming things that I carelessly didn’t think I would need to, they don’t even begin to compare to what I miss the most.
It’s so strange to travel 8,362 miles across the world to have the one thing that you miss the most be something that no longer exists. It’s something that I think everyone misses slightly as they move on to a new stage in their life, so it’s not something that I had to travel anywhere to miss, yet being away makes me miss it more. What I miss is the past. I miss jamming out to T Swift’s Bad Blood every single time we went off campus for lunch and eating terrible Manitowish food that somehow seemed to taste like it was a 5 star meal because of our exhaustion. I miss the way we used to spend every spare second of Freshman year in a practice room, and I miss the driven, goofy people that we used to be because even in the three short weeks that I’ve been in Thailand and my friends have all started their new adventures in college, I know we’ve all changed, so I miss what I can never get back.
I recognize that these places, experiences, and people are very alive in my memories and the memories of those who’ve shared these experiences, but in the words of Tennessee Williams, memory is “nonrealistic. Memory takes a lot of poetic license. It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart.” So maybe what I’m doing is wearing a pair of rose-colored glasses as I look at the past, idealizing it in all its glory, putting it on a pedestal. Maybe it’s because the people who I spent time with prior to my time in Thailand were so truly unique and incredibly kind that they’ve made a great dent on my heart and made the emotional value of the memories that I share with them immense.
My memories of them and with them are so strong and happy because of the pure emotion that we shared as we were unabashedly ourselves. We were all okay in being who we were, and as we grow up, things change, and we can try to stand in the same river but the water that flows past us will be different. We all must choose a path and live our lives separately, not to say that we won’t meet again, but we will never again have exactly what we had before, so cherish the past, but don’t live in it. Let the memories flow through you and make you a better person in all your current and future actions. Cherish those memories of the “good times” as biased as they may be, and let our unapologetically authentic selves live in notoriety.
Sam