An entire year has passed since I left Guatemala. Though “leaving” marked the end of my time in Peace Corps and the end of my 27 month commitment to Guatemala, I’ve come to realize that that part of my life never went away, and thankfully, never will. After a year of attempting reintegration, I’ve come to resolve that intentionality meshes those two lives together quite well.
Much like when I finished Peace Corps I’ve come up with a list of 15 parallel lessons that my new American life has taught me over the past year and continues to teach me.
1. Everyone I encounter comes from a different place - a different background, a different culture, another geographic location, or may have prospered with a different set of values. The challenge isn’t whether or not I can accept that, it’s how well I can work alongside that.
2. During Peace Corps, I learned that it’s always worth taking risks. In the past year some risks failed with disappointing results; some risks prospered with fruitful outcomes. It’s worth taking the 50/50 chance.
3. Systems confine me. Labels suffocate me. Bureaucracy threatens my authenticity. If I believe something, I must own it and express it.
4. Good friends are synonymous with family. Relationships are fluid. At the end of the day, I most value the people I love.
5. I have lots of undeserved privilege. I have to leverage that privilege for the common good.
6. I feed off the energy of others. If I’m around happy people, I’m a happy person.
7. Weird people lend me weird stories that make me weird. It’s symbiosis.
8. Purging my life of too much stuff frees my mind and as Mumford & Sons might add, “Awake[s] My Soul”!
9. I live in one of the fastest moving and efficient places in the world; still, I’d much rather take the long route, have the lengthy conversation, or find a distraction to restore my faith in meaning.
10. Three of the best adjectives I learned from day one of Peace Corps were “patience, flexibility and enthusiasm”. And those make the all the difference.
11. My ideal life would be perfect, but it's the messiness that makes it life.
12. Extra validation, encouragement, or good will are always worth the effort, wherever there’s someone to receive it.
13. I can cry over missing people, but reunions make me smile.
14. While I had to be accustomed to alone-time in Peace Corps, I’d much rather follow another piece of Mumford & Sons’ best advice, “Don’t leave me alone at this time, for I am afraid of what I will discover inside.”
15. Very few steps of reintegration have been easy, but I would have never known I had loved something so much, if I didn't miss it when it was gone.
In the past year, I’ve had four addresses, four W-2s, spoken two languages consistently, made purchases as big as a car and as small as a new “costal”, re-established my presence in the U.S., and asked bigger questions of myself and others than I had ever considered. This is the life of an RPCV - year one.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
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