The New Year is always a time for reflection. It's the symbolic embodiment of change - it should be no surprise to anybody that it falls under the sign of Capricorn. It is, well, capricious.
For some reason, I'm thinking about function tables. You enter in a number, and it leaves as something different.
In a way, an exchange year is like a function table.
You go in, however you were formed from the first 15-18 years of your life, and you undergo a process. It's not a process that you even know is happening until somebody points it out to you.
And you change.
I'm not going to lie - exchange is hard. It's really difficult. People speak to you in a different language - one that maybe you've never studied to heard before. You walk into a lot of walls. Many things are different.
Everything that you've ever known is taken away from you as soon as you step foot on that plane. And then you sit in the room for however many hours and you get off.
And you're not in Kansas anymore.
At first, you notice the big differences. The food. The weather. The flora. The sights and sounds.
And you start to feel all of these things - all of this emotions that you don't know how to handle - so many - bewilderment, excitement, engagement, astonishment, wonderment, apprehensiveness, nervousness, impulsiveness, inspiration, degradation, shock, worry, fear, anxiety, conviviality, energy, insecurity, longing, bravery, audacity, adamancy, confusion, inexperience, isolation - and you don't know how to cope.
You lack perspicacity.
And suddenly, it's not that simple. You don't just multiply 'x' by 1.5 and the natural log of the result. Because different people are affected in different ways, and each variable has a unique influence.
It seems spontaneous. As if nothing ever happened. You don't notice. There are no markings on the wall to measure against, to show that you have another two inches under your belt.
You're floating in a vast sea, like the astral world, where everything seems to mesh together.
Time flies by. Did I really do that last week? What did I eat for breakfast? What happened these past two weeks - I don't remember any of it. Time takes its own intervals. You wake you and you find that it's Tuesday, and you can't help but ask yourself, "What happened to yesterday?"
Sometimes, you multiply by 1.5. Other times, by 2. Or 7.2953. Or log6.027^(2*e!).
And you never know.
But once you know it's happening - and you do figure it out, eventually - you begin to worry about it. It becomes an obsession. The little things seem much bigger than they are, because you feel so much smaller than you are.
There is no equilibrium. New chemicals are being added all the time. New variables, new stimulus, temperature changes, pressure changes, volume changes, catalysts - and there are new results. It's not a reversible process.
There's no going back and making modification. You act, and then it's gone.
We let bygones be bygones.
But we can't. We think about over what happened, and we remember what we did, and why we did it, and what was said, and our feelings, and our decisions, and our anticipations, hopes, dreams, fears, anxiety - and we add more to the mixture.
And it goes back in.
New variables, new stimulus. New results.
It's like a cycle.
You know that it happens, but you can't explain it. You can't isolate it at any one time, because each individual change is so small, so minuscule, the tiniest minutiae, that tracking is impossible.
Don't even try.
It's too fast to be a whirlwind of change, because you are acutely aware of every moment. But it's too slow to dissolve or melt or freeze, because you can acutely aware of every moment.
But just as the salted snail knows, you know. Something, anything, is happening.
Sometimes it's difficult.
But that's exactly what you signed up for.
Things heat, things cool, things collapse.
We're in the mountains.
And the ground is so far away.
But at the end of the day, the change is ineffable because you don't know what's different.
This shouldn't be scaring anyone. I'll talk about New Year's when I write about Christmas and Rio de Janeiro.
Until then,
- Jake
