Halfway Home

My time volunteering here in the Marshall Islands has come to a very critical point. I am no longer counting the months I have been here and am rather counting the months until I go home. In the beginning conversations would go something like this.

“Wow, can you believe we have been here for a month already?”

“Yeah, that is crazy.”

Now those interactions are a bit different.

“Wow, can you believe we only have five months left here?”

“Yeah that is crazy.”

I am past the half-way point folks, and I am not sure how I feel about it. Like a college student in his senior year I am thinking about the next step while I am mid-stride.

That’s the perfect situation for a fall.

Growing up is a strange thing. Like a plastic bag in a wind storm, it is hard to pin down. Last year, as I was just leaving the kiddie pool of college to be dunked in the ocean of the “real world,” my good friend Gina asked me what the meaning of life was.

I told her some answer I heard once in a movie so I could seem wise. Inside I was secretly screaming with every tiny fiber in my body the same question.

Suddenly my life wasn’t defined by 9 am classes, big dining halls and text messages telling me where the best party was. People had jobs to go to, I had insurance bills to pay for and no, my new boss at the Pioneer was not interested in giving me an extension on my assignment because of the mean bout with the flu I had just gotten over.

All of the things I used to have in college suddenly served to remind me that life was forever going to be different. I found myself wishing that I had savored it more instead of being in such a rush to get out of there.
I don’t want that to happen here.

I don’t want to wake up in six months and think that while being home is nice, wasn’t that sweet when I went surfing in my front yard in just a pair of shorts? When the overpowering Oregon fall rains sweep in and I am facing yet another gray day, I don’t want to regret not hiking to the next island over at low-tide and watching the sun play hide and seek in cartoon clouds from my hammock.

I have five months left. That’s five months to go to as many different islands as possible. That’s five months to learn as much Marshallese as I can. That’s five months to joke with my students, to spearfish, to snorkel, to wear flip-flops, to sail and to live in a tropical coral atoll thousands of miles from anywhere.

Maybe if Gina asked me today what the meaning of life is I would have a better answer. I could tell her that while I am not sure, I have an inkling that it has something to do with opening your eyes every morning and deciding to discover the day.
And while that might sound like a tag line from a Hallmark card, it works for me. The next step back into the “real world,” the United States, might be even more shocking to me this time around, but I know one thing — during my next blustery winter Oregon day I will not be thinking, “I wish...