That Big Moment

Remember when I said I was waiting for that "big moment" to hit me? Well... I think it just did.

Not in an oh-my-god-I'm-on-the-other-side-of-the-world kind of way. Not in a how-am-I-going-to-speak-the-language kind of way. 

The moment hit me like a rush of presence, an abrupt sense of awareness that I, my 21-year old self, am in freaking Thailand. I, my 21-year old self, am living a chapter in my life that I will look back on years from now and think about how lucky I was to have had this opportunity. 

I think it all hit me today while we were rafting down the Mae Tang river, as the final hours of our Hill Tribe Field Study trickled through the hourglass. 

For 5 hours, I was perched upon a bamboo raft, flowing with the current of the river, winding through the rainforest. The only thing to do was to soak in all that was around me. 

The cool, green water rushing across my feet... 

The tropical trees draping their vines like curtains on either sides of the river, slow-dancing to the rhythm of the breeze...

The birds sending their pulsating chirps down a tunnel to the horizon, taking turns to echo each other’s sound. The crickets suffusing their chorus. The frogs croaking each verse...

The rays of the sun catching the mist between the trees...

Have you ever had one of those moments when you’re driving in a car, and a certain song comes on the radio and reminds you of a memory from your past?

It’s almost as if you can re-live it - the memory, I mean, through the feelings that have been awakened by some unanticipated medium. Sometimes it’s a song on the radio. Sometimes it’s a photograph. Sometimes it’s a smell. You ever walk passed someone who’s wearing the same perfume as your grandmother? ...and suddenly you close your eyes and you’re sitting next to her on the porch, listening to the warmth of her voice as she teaches you how to win fifteen consecutive rounds of solitaire.

How is it that a memory can have such power over your body? How can you close your eyes and journey back in time through the depths of your mind, feeling every emotion you felt so long ago?

I thought about it a lot today, as I absorbed my surroundings on that bamboo raft. I thought about how memories are created. True memories - not the grade you got on your college essay, not the name of your first grade teacher. A memory, to me, is a capsule of emotions. It is a treasure chest of feelings from a specific part of your life, stored in a place that defines every moment of your existence. That’s why there are keys - those songs, those photos, those smells. They come across your path in sporadic blessings, unlocking your memories for a brief moment of reflection, until time pulls your consciousness back to reality. 

It was a weird feeling though. That “big moment” felt more like the realization that a memory was transpiring right in front of me. I became suddenly aware that this journey is shaping itself into a realm of feelings, senses, and emotions that I will have for moments in the now but forever in my mind. It was a “big moment” of realization that now is the time to soak everything in, to be fully present to all that this amazing journey has to offer. 

So I guess that big moment hit me more in a don’t-miss-a-thing-because-this-trip-won’t-last forever kind of way. It hit me in a be-fully-present-now-so-I-can-take-these-memories-with-me kind of way. And I guess it was a little less scary, and a little more exciting than I had ever expected.