Twenty Years and Counting

One of the most frustrating things about being young is that the future is this dark abyss of mystery. There is more unknown in the future of a young person than the average elderly. Every step you take may lead you to a different place, but you don't really know the difference. You can only see right where you are standing and no further. Knowing this, there are three choices you can make. One is to stay exactly where you are and mingle in the present. Two is to go back where you came from, because it is a route you are familiar and comfortable with. Three is to take the next blind step out into the darkness. Which one will you choose?

I have developed this profound fear that may be something every young person feels in one way or another. It is the fear that in the blink of an eye, I will be 80 years old scrunched up in a chair and bitter with extreme regret because I was not able to live the life that I wanted. I will watch young people running around and wishing I was that age again so I could do things over again, and so I could actually climb Mt. Everest without my health hindering me. I fear that time will pass by too quickly, and I'll wonder where all of my life went.

It's absurd. It's immature. It's melodramatic. It's over-analytical. It's coated with a multitude of layers of negativity. Maybe I should just stop thinking too much. But I don't think these fears are all that detrimental to my present well-being. It's what you create with these problems that matter.

My summer break this year was looking a little vague up until just last week. I plan obsessively, so ever since February, I have been applying to various things and planning alternative ideas for my 3 month vacation. I conquered the whole wave of internships and job applications as well as some research opportunities. But what was always itching me in the back of my mind was that this was a whole 3 months. Who could ever be granted so much time to use so freely? Somewhere in my long hours of web browsing, I came to a couple articles about Nepal one year after the terrible earthquake. It had got me wondering how the country and its people can recuperate from such a disaster when the world has forgotten about them?

Turns out I had gotten acceptances from a handful of internships located in New York City in addition to a generous grant from my university to fund my trip to Nepal this summer. Following my Anthropology professor's advice, I have made the choice to volunteer in Nepal. This experience will be unlike others I have shared with you on this blog. When asked why I wanted to do this specifically in Nepal in the grant application, I argued two things, one of which regarded my interest in NGO work and disaster relief. What always fascinated me was how quickly we can know about international disasters, yet how quickly we can forget. Thanks to international news networks and internet, we can know what happens on the other side of the world within minutes, even seconds of the event. So when the earthquake hit Nepal in 2015, NGOs and several parts of the world came to help, and people sitting behind their screens shook their heads in discomfort and pity. But where is the news coverage about how the Nepali are doing now? Perhaps a few weeks after the earthquake hit, Nepal was old news. The suffering of countless amounts of people was forgotten. I have found very little information about how the Nepali are doing now, and am going there as a kind of investigation of how a country like Nepal is responding to the disaster with a dwindling of foreign aid. The other reason is to simply build the soft skills required of an Anthropologist.

I am really looking forward to this summer. A bit nervous, but excited at the same time.

As awesome as this trip sounds, it is bittersweet. I think about how little I am in my home in New York City, and how little I see my family. I wonder if I am making the right choices by going abroad so much and doing something like this. I wonder if it would be better for me to stay in one place and deepen my relationships with the people I already know. I wonder if I should be using this free time to sculpt memories while my family is all still in one piece and while we are all still on this planet.

Is this entire thing just one big act of selfishness? What if I am stepping in the wrong direction? I won't ever know because I cannot see where I am going. The only thing I can be certain of is that I am moving. I wonder if that is better than staying where you are, or retracing your steps. This is the frustrating truth about the ambiguity of the future. It is the struggle to see into the never-ending abyss. And the only thing I can do is embrace it rather than run away from it.

On a lighter note, I have finally turned 20, and conveniently enough found this poster at school tacked onto the wall. (Although Boody's birthday is actually on April 21st).

#youth #frustration #travel #birthday