TAL Vox Assignment: Big Wide World
This Week's Assignment:
Tell us your stories about the things that can happen when you strike out into the world.
Here's our version:
This American Life, Episode #335: Big Wide World
This week on This American Life: Haider was a teenager living in Iraq when the war broke out. All of a sudden, the whole world was watching what was happening in his country. And he decided to do one of the least safe things possible: work for foreign media covering the war. Plus, other stories of what happens when you strike out into the world. Broadcast June 15-17 on This American Life.
Tell us your stories about the things that can happen when you strike out into the world.
Here's our version:
This week on This American Life: Haider was a teenager living in Iraq when the war broke out. All of a sudden, the whole world was watching what was happening in his country. And he decided to do one of the least safe things possible: work for foreign media covering the war. Plus, other stories of what happens when you strike out into the world. Broadcast June 15-17 on This American Life.
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Striking out into the world. This could mean anything. For me, it means the time I made my mother cry as she drove me home from college on Thanksgiving break. I told her there was something that I needed to do. Something I needed to find out. It involved hopping on a plane to England to meet someone I'd never come face to face with before. It involved holding onto the body from which a familiar voice had been soothing me for what was going on three years now. I was off to meet my other half.
When the plane was ready for touchdown, my heart was trying to break free from my body. My brain was deprived of sleep. Finally, in the airport, I found myself enveloped in his arms. And that was all I needed in the world. It was the B in my A to B journey. And I was ready to rest.
I was sorry that I had made my mother cry. But I knew she would understand. She had a heart as well.
I met Lynne when we were both camp counselors. Since there were so many other women from all over the world at the all girls camp, I hardly thought of her as one of the internationals. But come August when I had to return to Pennsylvania and she to British Columbia -- Canada suddenly awfully far away.
But we stayed together for my senior year of college, traveling across the continent every 6 weeks or so. She was my first serious same-sex relationship, and I stuck to her with an intensity of first love.
We eventually made it to camp for another summer. I remember sitting up late at night just wondering what we would do come this August. Now that I was done with school, we were finally free to move to the same country. But which?
The sad fact was that America, with its strict post 9/11 rules on international students and "sanctity of marriage" dictates, made it impossible for her to remain in the states and impossible for us to have a future there. Off to Canada we went, with me carrying all my belongings in a suitcase and something very far from my family's blessings.
It's been a year now in Canada. We're married. We have a dog. We have a condo. I have a job. I'm even working on become a permanent resident. What's most delightful is that my family has even set about acquiring their first passport to come visit me this summer.
Sometimes striking out in the world means that you make other people -- you never thought would -- get out there too.
You discover things about your own country that you never even knew until you find others doing things quite differently and sometimes effectively.
You find out what others think of the people in your own country, which is sometimes surprising.
You develop confidence because you have to take care of yourself in places where English might not be understood and you appreciate the support of others who are eager to help.
You find strength, stamina and courage when you most need it, like when you're hungry and the only thing offered is unidentifiable and floating in grey grease. Or when you're sleepy and you know that's no bird in the ceiling. Or when the train is late and waiting on the platform is freezing.
You learn patience. You learn a lot of patience.
Your attitude about your own life improves and it's easier to be positive minded.
You develop attention to detail -- what to remember and what to overlook.
You become perhaps a journal writer, a photographer, a travel writer.
Your friends love your life and are enthusiastic about your good fortune. They think you're brave and adventurous.
You ARE brave and adventurous.
"Things" mean less and people mean more.
The connection between and among people, even with a language barrier, is incredible and compelling.
In discovering how little others need to make a life, you begin to need less in your own, which is a good thing because you don't want to have to schlep excess baggage.
You carry a range of clothes but find yourself wearing only your favorites day after day.
Depending on where you are in the world, you'd kill for a decent cup of coffee.
You appreciate that it's a freeing experience to be yourself.
You talk to others, even if you can't share spoken words, and you are often moved to tears by making those connections.
You find a lot of wonderfully quirky fellow travellers on the road.
When it's time to go home, you don't want to leave. When you get home, it's a welcome place and you appreciate it more.
You are planning your next trip before you ever land at the airport.
I still remember waving goodbye to my one friend in Melbourne (she had emigrated there from HK a year ago), as the Greyhound bus pulled out of the station. That was it. I was on my own. On my way to Adelaide. It was thrilling. And scary. I was about to embark on great adventures, with only myself and the kindness of strangers for help. I had only told my parents earlier that day, after I changed the plane tickets and got my cross-country bus pass. They had no choice, but to send me some extra money poste restante in Alice Springs, where I expected to be in 5 days, when what little money I had would have run out.
I was an odd traveler – I had a suitcase, not a backpack. I had only my Catholic school uniform and clothes appropriate for a public speaking contestant representing her home town – very different from the fashion sense of the backpacking crowd I find myself with.
Here are the most memorable moments from my first strike out in the world:
- climbing Ayer's rock with a broken ankle
- sitting outside the post office and bursting into tears when I realize my parents' money hasn't arrived. I was broke, been eating nothing but sliced bread for days, and couldn't afford another night at the hostel.
- the generosity and charity of the postman, who let me stay at his home and bought me dinner until my parents' money came – and my immense good luck that he wasn't some pervert but a truly good-hearted, generous man
- the kindness of the Japanese girl I had befriended at the hostel, who left me at the postman's with a bag of cookies, some money, and a note to be careful
- the intense fear and helplessness when I found myself at some remote look-out point with a random stranger, who started making unwanted advances
- the mixed feelings of relief and fear and bewilderment when I actually talked the stranger out of his actions, and started hiking back out to town
Now I'm grown, travel with my husband, and always knowing what hotel I'm staying at, what cities I'll be in. I don't put myself into stupid, dangerous situations anymore, but I also don't experience the kindness of the world as before.