A Taxi Ride Down Memory Lane

You never really know what’s gonna set off your memory.

Last night, at 3AM, coming home from a club in Downtown Chicago, I was seated smack-dab in the middle of a tiny cab in between people I hardly knew.  It felt all too familiar.

All the late nights around the world while on my epic voyage came to mind.  All those times when we would pack into taxis like they were clown cars.  “Look at those dumb Americans,” everyone must of thought.  Those rides were some of the best times.  Either we were on our way to an amazing adventure and anxiously waiting in anticipation for what was to come, or we were on our way home, our ship, the MV Explorer, reveling in what we just accomplished, panting for breath, and glad we survived in order to repeat the same process yet again the next day.

There were the incomprehensible taxi drivers.  Or rickshaw drivers.  Or even moto drivers.  Whether paying in rand or rupee (or real, but that is feigned alliteration since it’s actually pronounced with an initial ‘h’ sound), we could never really get the conversion rate just right.  We often overpaid, much to the driver’s content, though his price gauging felt justified since my chump change probably fed him and his family that day.

There were the roads.  The signs, the traffic, the animals.  But most of all the the people.  Pedestrians running across the street for dear life.  The female entrepreneurs selling goods from gargantuan baskets on their heads.

The most memorable thing, though, were my companions.  For a brief amount of time, we were sharing in the same journey.  Seeing the same things.  Experiencing the same confusion or joy or what-have-you.  Some of these rides were shared with some of my best friends, and some were shared with complete randos, and those times were one of the few instances in which it was ever acceptable to be sitting on a complete stranger’s lap.  The only other time I can think of when that's okay is if that stranger was in a Santa Claus costume during Christmastime, and even that’s a bit weird.

So my one lasting piece of advice or wisdom or whatever you want to call it is to keep having new experiences.  It’s gonna be a fun ride down memory lane when you realize they’re not so new after all.

All Aboard

As I sit here at JFK a month after disembarkation of the Semester at Sea Spring 2012 voyage, I think about the notion of temporariness.  This year so far, the longest I’ve been in a single place has been roughly a week and a half.  I’ve been moving non-stop, and it’s partially exhilarating while being equally depressing.  There’s a thrill to be found when in constant motion, but there’s the thought in the back of your head always yelling, “When will it all end?”

With this movement comes a slight discomfort.  Everything is new an familiar, and that’s fine and dandy, but there’s a safety in staying put and being normal.  I’ve never really been one to seek the banal, but sometimes, you kinda have to do that for sanity’s sake.  Too much difference can create a clash in your brain of what’s truly comfortable to the point that you don’t really know what that even is anymore.

Regardless, my flight to Chicago is in less than an hour.  I’m incredibly excited to intern at the National Office of GlobeMed, a noble NGO which I have already dedicated so much time, effort, and passion.  For those who are unaware, please check out the new globemed.org to find out what we’re all about.

After a few days in New York, I couldn’t hesitate but draw a comparison between our lives and journeys to the subway.  We all know how much I live and love the subway.

There are oh-so-many subway lines.  Whether those are named numbers, letters, colors, destinations, what-have-you, there are a trillion miles of track.  Each train follows a track and have frequent, or infrequent, stops.  Some go express.  Some follow the same track for a while and then branch apart.  Most importantly, subway lines intersect.  They meet with each other, and passengers are allowed to swap.  Sometimes, they only intersect once.  Sometimes, they meet several times.  Some train lines ever meet at all.  Rest assured, people can probably transfer a few times and finally get on a specific line.  That can often get complicated, but I guarantee, it’s possible.

I’d like to think of human connections much like the subway system.  We’re each our own subway line following the trajectory of our lives.  We all go at our own pace, taking stops along the way where we find other train tracks, other people, with whom we share ideas, stories, and experiences.  And then we keep going.  Sometimes, we follow the same track for a while and continue to share with each other.  But often, we separate and keep going.  There are many times where subway lines come together again at another stop, and that’s always a nice breath of fresh air.  Most of the time, they don’t.  However, through the intricate web of our social networks (just look at Facebook, for example), we’re never really too far away.  Somebody we meet here will know someone from so-and-so place or will be seeing someone at so-and-so place where they will intersect.  For all intents and purposes, we’re all one big subway system.  We’re all connected.

So as I sit here in Terminal 5 on transit to the next figurative train stop on my journey, I hope to see some of you there as much I would have loves to have taken you with me.  For those who I won’t see, I hope to see you on a detour some time down the road when, I hope, our train lines meet again.

In the mean time, I’ll just enjoy the ride.  For the rest of you, all aboard!