We've all heard it before--there's nothing quite like the first time. The first time you try a delicious new food, the first time you see a place and experience a culture, the first time you fall in love, and the first time your heart is broken. During first times, you are vulnerable. You allow yourself to take everything in with open arms, to associate each experience with an emotion, and to ride the highs and lows of the first-time rollercoaster.
Two summers ago, I came to Switzerland for the first time. I was working on a climate change through storytelling project thanks to a Swiss government grant. This three-month stay was one of the most carefree times of my life--probably because I had just graduated from college, and so the ensuing months embodied the freedom of a post-school life. At the same time, I had not stopped living according to the "D-plan" (and how convenient that another 3-month stint lay ahead). During these short, intense experiences, you throw yourself in wholeheartedly, and then go nonstop until you "crash and burn," as I call it. Then you get sick, rest, recover, and start all over again.
In the summer of 2013, I was on a perpetual fairytale-like high. My work was enjoyable and engaging (after all, it essentially entailed taking the train to remote villages to interview mountain guides, and then writing about the interviews afterwards), my flatmates were wonderful--totally taking me under their wings and incorporating me into their lives. I started dating one of them. I befriended a couple yoga instructors and became a devout student at a local yoga studio that had a sacred feel to it. I was training for an ultra-marathon and most days the training felt like play--speed hiking up long mountain passes and running down to the village below, only to take the train home afterwards. Speaking foreign languages was fun and stimulating-- getting by in a combination of Hoch Deutsch, Französisch, and Englisch, and a few words of Schwitzerdütsch. Riding up and down the hills of Bern on a bike I borrowed from a flatmate, I felt as though I'd become a Bernese--or a least could pass for one.
I took it all in, soaked up each moment, each new sight. And whatever I did not understand, either culturally or because of language barriers, I spun into a positive light, so as to complete the fairytale story I so badly wanted to live. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I allowed myself to be vulnerable.
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| Bern "skyline" |
Now, two years later, I am back in Bern. I decided to visit my Swiss friends and former flatmates because I hadn't seen them in a while, and also in order to gain a "feel" for Europe
again before grad school deadlines come around in the fall (I am considering
going to school in Europe). I always romanticize living in Europe (maybe for
good reason), so wanted to be there up close and personal, asking myself the
tough questions. And for all I knew, maybe I would return to the U.S. feeling
confident about going to school (and working) in my own country.
Revisiting a place is an entirely different
story from seeing it for the first time. You hash up old memories with a tinge
of nostalgia, maybe more than a tinge. It's a bit pointless, isn't it? To long
for what was, but what is no longer. Why do we do this? Why did I chose to
spend my vacation being masochistic? But it's also a stereotype in a way-- to go
somewhere to feel. ("Eat, Pray, Love" is the first
example that comes to mind...anything more high-brow, anyone?).
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| Re-visiting the old city |
The two years in between
then and now were my first two years out of a life of schooling, so certainly
they fostered the type of growth that being in school does not lend itself to.
I notice myself substituting a childlike sense of wonder and imagination with
rational logic, or at least an attempt at it. What a let down. Why does growing
older entail stopping ourselves short from completing the fairytale? Why does
risky vulnerability become safe, neutral almost 'numbness'?
Of course the stakes are higher now. The whole
"career path" thing* is a constantly churning broken record. There
are moments when I would so badly like to open my arms and take everything in,
the highs, the lows, riding the waves in between. The beginning of this trip
made we wish never again to revisit somewhere, because as much as I tried
to invoke the "no expectations" mantra from Don Miguel Ruiz's The
Four Agreements, the precedent had been set and it seemed only
natural to make a comparison to it.
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Re-visiting the Bundeshaus
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Unfortunately,
we cannot always have first times. We go back to work, we wash our clothes
and wear them again, we eat that second bite of mango (or smoked salmon or
chanterelle or what have you), and we learn something deeper than the
principle of diminishing marginal returns tells us. The second-time lens
provides us with clarity: we start to see things for what they are, glamorous and not, and to discover richer layers than the first time unearths. We learn what really
matters to us--which core ingredients are essential to live by. We come to
terms with not only what comes easily, but also with that which is
difficult--situations that nostalgia tactfully leaves behind.
We also learn
to bring the first-time lens to our daily routines, and to the experiences we
take for granted. Of course it's not fair to compare our work commute to
stepping off an airplane and soaking in a new atmosphere for the first time,
but we can always surprise ourselves. The deeper layers and hidden
details of second-time life won't reveal themselves unless we take the first
step in uncovering them.
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Re-visiting the mountains
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*I would like to note that I
feel extremely privileged to even have the ability to question my career path
in the first place, and to travel here to try and discover it. Sure the
uncertainty is unnerving, but being tied down by debt would be a whole lot
worse.
