Scotland: Take your Time Coming Home

I've waited a couple of days to make the last post for my trip to Scotland. It seemed appropriate for me to take some time after coming home to decompress and really think about what had just happened to me. And it's kind of amazing, because I don't have the words to talk about everything that's happened to me. Literally. There are no words that I could possibly use to talk about every event, every friendship, and every time I thought to myself "did you ever think you'd get here?".

For awhile I was really concerned with how I would talk about my abroad experience. It seemed to be the most important part of the semester: how you talk about it afterwards. How do you tell the people you care about most, who didn't necessarily share in the experience, about the life-changing (there's that word again) time you just had? And more importantly, how do you convince yourself that the last 4 months weren't just some elaborate dream, manufactured in the crazy, rolling hills of Glen Coe in your mind? And then it occurred to me; why do you need to talk about it? Why compare, contrast, strive to find a way to talk about those months? Is that so important to you?

I don't think I understood the idea that this experience is just for ME until just now. Why would it, or should it, be for anyone else?

Right around Christmas-time, I like to watch "It's a Wonderful Life", and not just because it's a Christmas-time movie, but because of it's message: Every moment is important. There's a really strong sense of fate and the workings of the universe in that film. We have an incredible impact on the places and people around us. Right towards the end of my time in Scotland, I was really afraid of being forgotten, or I suppose, of not having an impact on the people who had an impact on me. It seems ridiculous that that's something I'd want, but it seemed strange that these people and places could change my life, and that I wouldn't have an equal impact on them. Needless to say, i'm no longer worried about that. It's a Wonderful Life, and I couldn't ever forget that after my time in Scotland.

So thank you, Scotland, Nessie, the Cecilians, my Internationals, Flat A-Cheviot House, Dublin, Parma, the MacDonald Clan, Buchanan Street, and Kake: there are no words.

So here' the message: It's a Wonderful Life, if you take some time to stop and listen to the universe. Stare at the lights on the tree. And never forget that you have an impact on this world.

Until later,