During my first night in Georgia, in an old, drafty hotel, made with dark wood and without electricity, I had a dream. Lying in the dark, as the drizzle tapped on my room’s single pane window, I dreamt that I had returned from my study abroad and was back at my home university. I saw how everything and everyone had moved on without me. I saw my ex-girlfriend treating someone else the way she used to treat me. I saw how new people had been integrated into my old social circle and replaced me. I felt alone, rejected and forgotten, a passing entertainment that was trying to continue living a past that no longer existed and from which everyone had moved on; everyone except me. I felt left behind, no longer a close friend to those I loved, but someone that you invite over to dinner for old times sake, out of courtesy for what that person used to be. A guest who is expected to leave at the end of the night and let his hosts get back to their new, more preferred lives.
I was a dinosaur in Time Square. The only one who had not realized that a meteor had hit the past and that everyone else had moved on into a new and better world into which I no longer fit. Things have changed and they will never again be the same. My absence and subsequent return had made me of passing interest to all but my closest friends, but nothing more.
When the sun came through the window to wake me the next morning, it brought with it a catharsis; I realized that while things have indeed changed, I have the knowledge and ability to adapt to whatever changes have transpired in my absence; the same way that I had adapted to living in a different country. And, just like the transition to Turkey or China or New Zealand, the transition back to America would not always be easy or fun. But in the end, it is not by doing things that are easy or fun that we are able better ourselves or from which we derive true value in our lives, but rather it is in pushing ourselves beyond what is comfortable and routine. In looking at a challenging situation and throwing yourself head first into it, knowing that you will come out a better person on the other side. I realized that the old adage, “Don’t be sorry its over, be happy it happened,” is a very good way to look at life and that, as good as yesterday was, tomorrow has the potential to be even better. With this realization came a feeling of contentment and, after looking around my now sunlit room, I walked to the bathroom and noticed that my hallway light was on.
