In a few hours my brother Alan boards a plane to Rome. It brings a devilish smile to my face just thinking about it. There are many thoughts behind that smile. Envy is the obvious one. But perhaps not directed towards what most would think. After all, I have the means and do plan to go to Rome in a few years. No, no, those who have gone abroad at that young age know what I mean, and know that my envy is more likened to nostalgia.

I envy the experience as I remember my own. The jitters before the flight, the small thoughts of panic and the determined look on my face as I stolidly marched forward, figuring there was time to really panic once I was on the plane and there was no turning back. I remember furiously writing in my college journal, the one I’d kept and written in all of two months my freshman year followed by a page or two every four to six months. Now I was writing pages upon pages, and we hadn’t even made it over Hawaii. I remember telling myself that it could all be a blank slate. No one knows me, no one couldn’t care less. I could soak in everything I was experiencing and try to not have it colored by a personal context present with people I knew and loved. This may sound rather awful, but I really needed the break. And everyone who has done this knows this is what happens… I just happened to be a little more determined to have it happen than most.

You’ll never fully lose yourself. After all, you’re there with you. But the confines of yourself loosen as you find yourself in a new context. You can express yourself to a far greater degree, and in so doing, discover much more about who you are and who you are becoming. You develop layers, you come to understand more about your actions, you basically, through what may look like a shallow, hedonistic dance from one event to another, learn very deeply about just what you can do, what you want to do, and what you know you’ll never do again or never do. You grow up more in one day than you ever did in a year.

Don’t get me wrong. Assholes stay assholes more often than not, and they just become more of an asshole when let loose in a place that does not know them. Sometimes they change. Most often they don’t. There are also perfectly nice people who go on these adventures and come back the same. This is because they bring their restraints with them. They consider their actions as if they were still themselves in the old context, instead of finding themselves free to explore and delve in a new one. So no, some people just don’t get it. Many of these are the ones who get homesick and in fact go home the first chance they get. It’s a waste of an experience, but it’s what they want. They’re not learning or growing any faster, but it’s what they want and maybe it’s because this particular adventure just wasn’t going to be the key that would unlock their true potential.

Alan is none of those examples. How much he has grown in college is already indicative of just how much we may not recognize him when he returns (hopefully no sooner than July). He will look at us, his family and friends, with eyes that may pierce us deeper than some of us may like. What will he see then, this almost stranger?

Exciting, isn’t it?

I do have a few lamentations (and if he is reading, a few hints). The world is smaller today than it was twelve years ago when I went on my own little adventure. Back then, a phone card home was a precious thing and I rarely used it. The internet was a PINE account on a Linux box in a smelly, stuffy room, and I could count the friends who had an email account with one hand. Letters, hand-written, with a good deal of thought and perhaps emotion in the strokes, were the primary means of communication. Care packages with items I could not find were sent, with love, from those who thought of me back home. Yes, you’re in a new place, and yes you are growing. But those thin, silk, gossamer threads were anchors that reminded you that there is still an old place that must be kept.

My fear is that with today’s world, such reminders are far more available. The internet gives Alan IM, Facebook, email and easily – video Skype and others. Cell phones have cheap SIM cards and SMS that can be sent internationally on the cheap. This makes it perhaps too close a reminder of the old place, and it could stifle growth in the new place. It is a cruel thing to ask that you not contact your family and friends as often as they would like you to, but I find it far more cruel to retard new potential out of selfish love.

I therefore have a secret little hope that he keeps himself off the internet and spends his days out in the piazza, sipping an espresso and ciao’ing the beautiful women who walk by. And this means not hanging with hip Macbook-toting Italians in a cafe with a hotspot.

So sally forth. Do not look behind for there is much to see ahead. There will be time enough for reunions.

一路順風!

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