Mixed Feelings

Warning: This is a long post and not really very entertaining...don't feel like you have to read it.

Maybe it sounds silly, but after reading of only a sliver of what must be mountains upon mountains of adventures my distant friend is currently living in China and Tibet, my heart sinks, and I wonder what I’m doing here, in a foreign-but-not-too-foreign country, surrounded by people just like me, doing things I’ve been doing my whole life, at a time when it’s supposed to be okay to topple out of your comfort zone at any available moment.

 

At first I am jealous that he is doing what I am supposed to be doing, that I have come up short in my Great European Adventure as I let endless possibilities end with what is familiar to me. But my feelings of discontent grumble deeper in my stomach than just that so I am forced to pry deeper into my mind and soul, something I am sadly uncomfortable with doing regularly.

“I wish I had gone to China” I think, or Russia, the home of my distant ancestors and an opportunity that was actually conceivable within the confines of my college program—four months in Russia studying at the legendary Moscow Art Theatre, the origins of many of the most famous and ingenious actors and playwrights of the last two centuries. I told myself I could take Russian courses the year before, figure out the specifics, and forever be that guy who did something unique, had a life-changing experience, and came back as a newer, better version of himself.

 

Since I’m not especially keen on being an actor (because presumably I lack the dedication, ambition, self-confidence, and talent for it—an all-too familiar trend in my life, comparable to quitting…let’s see…drawing, piano, baseball, jazz trumpet, and singing, among other less important self-defeats) I convinced myself it didn’t make sense because I’d be studying almost exclusively Russian acting techniques, and would not gain as many credits necessary to graduate on time. Fair points, to be sure, but ultimately if it’s a life-changing experience you’re after, some things are more important than not having to take summer classes in order to graduate.

 

But it’s not quite regret I’m feeling, because that’s a different type of pang one feels below the stomach, and, being familiar with that, I recognize it when I feel it. I think more carefully about my friend’s experience, and I realize that if put in a similar situation, I would have more trouble surviving. He has many advantages on his side that cater to his journeys—an outgoing nature but comfortable enough with himself to survive alone (a fatal flaw in myself—though I enjoy having personal time I feel anxious being by myself for any extended amount of time), and the gift of communicating through music. In his stories this seems to play an important role, which makes sense since it is something that is truly universal, and many countries inherit American music into their culture—that’s just the way it is. Equipped with a harmonica, guitar, vast knowledge of funny or obscure or classic songs, and an amiable, affable and unflappable personality (I realize I boast about your qualities too much, friend, but these are things I respect you for), not to mention a keen sense of poetry and turn of phrase with which he reports these stories, making me feel all the more awe-inspired and envious, he has the tools necessary for connecting with nearly everyone. Though I have many qualities that I am grateful for, the ones I’ve listed are not prominent among them (my clunky phrasing and run-on sentences in this passage serve as only one example among many) and I fear had I subjected myself to less familiar areas of the world I would have found it more daunting, painful, and isolating.

 

I do not mean to say that I wish I were he, or possessed his qualities, though I am sad to think that perhaps I am not cut out for such epic adventures, and would do better in a cozy home surrounded by loved ones, never leaving my library save for the occasional excursion to a quiet restaurant or an evening of theatre. I’m afraid to put myself out into the world, meaning literally the world that I am so greatly unfamiliar with, the distant regions of our planet, the inexplicable situations most of the population finds themselves in that I will most likely never experience.

 

I only use the comparison of my friend’s travels to emphasize what I wish I were capable of doing. I didn’t mean to linger on him so long because he’s not what I’m really trying to talk about, but isn’t it easier to talk about others than yourself, at least on sensitive matters of personality, fears, ambitions, shortcomings, and the like? Still, the fact that someone I know well is living something I thought I was trying to live makes my failure all the more real.

 

Even now as I sit at my computer in my flat I am glad I am not out with my friends here, because this is what I prefer. I should be willing to open myself to many other things yet when I start to I always find myself wishing I were back here. It might be an unchangeable part of my nature, that I am a home-dweller, that I am more interested in philosophy than actual experience and therefore am doomed to speak of everything in hypothetical terms for the rest of my life. But I think that people are meant to change, and I have witnessed this myself, and always been jealous that it was not me who came out the other side as someone new, though I hope I am different than I was three, four, five, ten years ago. I can remember myself back then and judge, knowing full well that in ten or twenty years I can look back on myself now and do just that. But how much have I really changed, and what was it that brought about those changes?

 

All that being said, I enjoy it here very much. I think of it more as a place to live than a place to travel to, but I could only learn that the hard way, and in some respects a stay of four months constitutes living. It is easy. I am learning how to act like a grown-up (though I’m 100% positive I will never actually feel like a grown-up, I can only put on my best performance as one as I get further and further away from childhood), how to take care of myself (sometimes poorly), how to cook (always poorly), and various other little life-lessons I pick up on the way but could just as easily have figured out in America. This has proven to be more of a jump-start into adulthood rather than an independent experience of a foreign land, one of those stories you tell from “when I was in college”, looking back on fondly and thinking how silly you were then. Maybe that’s good, and maybe it’s what I need, but sometimes (namely now) it doesn’t feel like enough, so I’m left with a twinge behind my heart, thinking of what I could have been, where I could be, who I could become when I inevitably return to the places I already know.