A Final Post and A Big Thank You

As my flight descended last night into JFK I spent the last half hour in the air sifting through my brain. As we approached New York I saw the oh-so-familiar sight of the Empire State Building and of course it felt like I had never left. And so I sifted. I treated my brain like flash cards calling up a place and then forcing myself to think of a corresponding image. Burma - picture the first guesthouse I stayed in in Yangon. Chiang Mai - picture what my classroom looks like when the students are going crazy. Sirimankalajarn - my street in Chiang Mai, picture the turn onto my lane. Rinsuk Place - my apartment building, picture the laundry man downstairs hanging his wash out for the day. New York - picture this. As we got closer and closer to New York I was of course overjoyed but also worried that my past year would slowly disappear and so I recalled as much as I could as fast as I could. Just to make sure it was still there. Just to make sure I had done that.

It's strange being home. In many ways it feels like I never left. But then, I find my head filled with people, thoughts, memories that could never have existed in my life here before. It feels as if everything has more depth, like there is now a new dimension to my experiences as I am suddenly able to see my life here and my life there as just one combined life.

I have been thinking a lot about labels for the past few weeks. How quick we are to classify and box. When you are young the labels are smaller. There are the kids with brown eyes and the kids with blue eyes, there are the righties and the lefties. But, you are all from the same city and probably even from the same neighborhood. You leave home, you go to college and suddenly you are labeled as the place you are from, "oh you are a New Yorker." Am I? I mean I know that I am but I have no idea what that means to you. You leave school, "oh you are a Princetonian." That's true, but I don't know what box of yours that puts me in. And then you leave your country and you are suddenly representing an even bigger pool, "you are an American?" I'd never really thought about that part before, but yea I am.

I have brown eyes, I'm a rightie, I'm a New Yorker, I went to Princeton, and yes I'm an American. They're all boxes and labels, ways of simplifying a person down to sound bytes. But yes, they are truths and when pursued they are important. Now that I'm home I have a new label. "You lived in Thailand." Yes I did. But I have no way of ever knowing what that means to you.

After this year of exploration, self discovery, serious personal growth and pushing myself beyond any of my known limits the one hard and fast truth I have left with is that there is no way to box people. That we are all more similar and more different than anything we could ever imagine. While I type these words there are people in every single country in the world typing words. Different words, but we are all typing and expressing. As I breath we all breath. There is much to be shared and only the structure of boxes to keep us from sharing.

The perfectionist within me wishes to wrap up all my experiences in one tidy post. The realist knows that that is impossible. I am still frayed at every edge, the country I was living in is still devolving into complete civil unrest, my luggage is strewn about the house. Nothing is tidy.

But everything is full, and interesting, and filled with questions.