A Tourist in Chicago

It's been a crazy week and so I've taken a while to get this post out, but I took a trip to Chicago last weekend for the Northwestern football game. Not only did I get to watch a Husker victory, but a group of us took a trip on the 'L' and explored the streets of Chicago late into the night Saturday and all of Sunday morning. We ate the local cuisine and walked through the Field Museum and touched the giant silver bean. We sat along the harbor and looked out on the beautiful lake. My only complaint was that there wasn't enough time to take in everything. But I guess there never will be.

At one point, as my group was walking through the city, I lagged behind to take a photo. And I looked ahead at my group and every one of them was looking up at the buildings, their mouths slightly open, eyes wide. Looking back, I wish I'd gotten a picture of that. The awe in each of their faces as if the city was the most incredible thing they had ever witnessed.

Instead, I ran to catch up and turned to my friend Jessica and laughed. "You can definitely tell we're tourists,"I said.

But she didn't laugh along with me. She looked at me very seriously and asked, "Do you think when you live here long enough these just become buildings?"

I said I assumed so, since you would get used to it and she shook her head. "What a shame," she said.

I must agree. What a shame. It's awful how the things familiar to us so often lose their beauty. Most people that know me know that I did not enjoy the town I grew up in. I remember wanting to move away since the 2nd grade. I often say that the town was "boring." But truthfully, I lived in a pretty little valley with a river running nearby and rolling hills for miles around. No matter what experiences I may have had there, it's important to remember there's beauty in everything. It can be something we will see only once in a lifetime or something we see every day on the way to work. And it's a shame to miss even a bit of it.

If we don't have a past...

We are constantly trying to tell ourselves or others that we are different or special or unique. And sometimes that's a hard concept to believe. I know I often feel very "ordinary." It's one of the reasons we idolize celebrities that aren't so normal or dig back into our ancestry or heritage to find something exciting about our families.

There is one thing that every single person on earth has that is unique to them though. It's called a past. It's like a fingerprint that is forever changing. Even identical twins with the same family and friends have had their own conversations, activities, and experiences, even if they only lasted a second. Not one of us goes through life the exact same way.

We, as a society, are always categorizing people by interest or race or family but everyone is a little bit different and it's something we should treasure about the world I think.

This week I read the book Feed by M.T. Anderson, a dystopian novel about future people connecting their brains to "feeds" or computers. As one malfunctions, a girl loses an entire year of her memory. As she vents to her boyfriend, she says, "Who are we, if we don't have a past?" And really...who? Each day, we may be moving toward death, but we are also growing, right up until the end I think. That's why I find conditions such as amnesia, dementia, and alzheimer's so heartbreaking. They aren't just losing memories of others, but a part of themselves.

There are always quotes about "living in the present" and I don't disagree at all, but when I sit down and think about it, it's so important to take in as much of the past as possible, even the hard parts. You are special. You are different. Unique. But it's those hard events you went through that made you that way. Each place in your life is like another line added to the fingerprint of you.

Explore. Dream Discover.

 I can't really imagine anything better than exploring a place you've never been before, whether it's a new restaurant a block from my apartment or a whole new region of the world. Almost all of my best childhood memories include family vacations. I have loved traveling my whole life and have made my way, with a lot of help from my parents, to 34 U.S. States. Every one has something to offer, no matter how boring it sounds. I have seen the Atlantic and Pacific, the Rockies and the Appalachians. I have explored our nation's capital.

One of my favorite quotes ever is from Mark Twain, “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

I am trying very hard to follow his advice. So, I really want to travel abroad. Really bad.  I can't become the author or even the teacher I wish to be without discovering as much about the world as possible. And one of my biggest fears about my future career is that I'll never be able to continue my travel on a teacher's salary, although I know it is going to be the most rewarding job I could take on.

I am currently trying to gather enough scholarship money to intern abroad. I really like this program in New Zealand where I could work in a high school. Why New Zealand?  Because I know absolutely nothing about it. Not one thing. And what's more exciting than that? I get an adrenaline rush just thinking about it. Plus, it has one of the best public school systems in the world and would be a wonderful learning experience. But with just airfare costing over $2,000, it's probably just a dream. Sorry if my post this week is boring but I feel if I publish my goals and reasoning, I might have more drive to push toward this dream. Wish me luck and have a wonderful week!