Santiago

Some of the best things come out of us when we’re unceremoniously dumped somewhere and forced to rise to the challenge.

Transitioning from Chile back home came with a glaring lack of ceremony. We only had time to say goodbye to some, and in most cases we weren’t aware in the moment that it’d be the last time we saw each other. I had to unexpectedly leave in the middle of the night one night, with about 15 minutes to pack my things and fly out of the apartment that had hosted me so graciously. I thought my makeshift ceremony would be sleeping one last night in my bed, but no. 

Two chaotic and haphazard days later, I was back in Minnesota, at a friend’s little apartment in the Twin Cities. My homecoming ceremony was to fall asleep on the couch for 17 hours. 

Part of me couldn’t understand how there could be such a raw transition from one life to another, a transition so unprotected by the ceremonies we like to use to cushion change. Without that cushioning (the health scientist in me would like to call it cartilage), these two drastically different lives have bumped up against one another. It’s been a little uncomfortable. 

But the fact that the transition wasn’t smooth, it wasn’t slow, and it wasn’t foreseen for months and weeks and days, means it’s required something special from us: it’s called upon us to create meaning where meaning isn’t inherently built in-- where ceremony hasn’t created it for us. 

I think we’re all trying, bit by bit. For my part, I’m evaluating the things I found most meaningful about our time there and saying thank you and goodbye to each one, as they come. Most of them are people, moments, or giant hunks of land that knocked me over with their glory. Or, just my morning four-block walk from the apartment to the metro, with the angry streets and the happy sun. 

In this way, although we couldn’t properly say goodbye to Chile while we were there, we say goodbye now, a little each day. And the parts we can take with us-- the strength earned, the joy, the things we’ve learned that we’ll never not know-- we’re keeping all of them. 

To anyone wondering if they should spend their semester in Chile, know that it’s a hard place to leave. But after having gone, you can take comfort in knowing it has stayed pretty close to your heart. 

A friend I made in Chile shared with me this quote he read once that stuck with him. We’d been discussing the social/political climate in Chile, which led us to talk about the misguidedness and, at times, impossibility of comparing suffering. And he said, “Suffering is like a gas--it fills the space it’s in.” 

The real quote is from Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, and it goes, “A man's suffering is similar to the behavior of a gas…. [It] completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the ‘size’ of human suffering is absolutely relative.” 

This quote continued to be relevant in day-to-day conversations for the rest of our time in Chile. It would pop up every so often, a thread tying together different days, conversations and circumstances. “Suffering is like a gas,” we’d say. Whenever one of us would say it I’d picture a squat little gas fireplace filling with smoke ‘til you couldn’t see in. 

Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning has followed me around since early February to an uncanny extent. A friend gave me the book in the weeks before I left for abroad, and throughout my time in Chile, it somehow never faded from view--people kept quoting it or recommending it, and it was even suggested as a way to get through the difficulty of leaving Chile. 

Now I’m back in the States, quarantining in a friend’s apartment in St. Paul, Minnesota. Not twenty minutes ago, I was laying eagle-spread on the wooden floor next to my air mattress trying to comprehend that I was in the US instead of Chile, and I asked myself, how do you feel? I was expecting to feel sad. But I didn’t. I’ve been checking in every day, waiting to feel sad, assuming it must be coming for me, but it has never come. Truthfully, I haven’t been sad in a long time. 

To be clear: I want to be in Chile. Returning to my country was the last thing in the world I wanted to do, and from the moment I found out I had to go back to the moment my plane touched US soil, I felt like I was watching a movie of my life instead of actually living it. The desire to go back to Santiago is so strong it’s startling, and it hits me like I’m getting shocked by carpet static. But I’m not sad. I think Viktor Frankl helped me figure out why, just now (his streak of remaining eerily relevant continues ever longer)-- 

Suffering is like a gas, but I’m learning awe is like that, too. Awe fills every crevice of the body so that there’s no room for anything else. What I realized there on the floor was that I’m not sad, I’m in awe. In total awe of what I had in Chile. I spent many moments abroad simply trying to wrap my mind around the magnitude of what was happening, and there were so many dimensions to living in Chile that most of the time things felt a little surreal. Plus, the abundance of love and appreciation I felt and gave nonstop seems in hindsight nearly impossible. 

There’s no room for sadness in a body that holds this much awe. Now when I picture that lil’ gas fireplace, plugged at the top, is so full it’s nearly opaque.