Informal studies indicate that the pain of a dislocated elbow far exceeds that of a fractured or broken arm. After the shock wears off, every small motion sends flames through your entire body. And to make it worse, there’s the nauseating churn in your stomach when you see your arm, twisted at a gruesome angle.
My own informal study this past January1, however, would beg to differ. I can’t deny that the physical pain was bad; in fact, it remains the most physically painful experience of my life. But to compare the pain against that the potential torment of losing the ability to play during my last semester at Harvard, or never being able to engage with music at the same level as before… these thoughts, not the physical pain, made me cry for the first time in months as I sat in the hospital and waited for a diagnosis. You really don’t know how much something matters to you until you lose it2.
In some ways, starting 2017 with the worst injury of my life has set the tone for the year: this year is one in which I hope to I find what matters most to me and take the time understand how to really care of myself. Perhaps I’m being selfish, but I hope to emerge a better person and friend to others.
Painful memories aside, I thought the topic (dislocation) would make a nice segway into publishing my first post from Germany! In Marburg, to be exact. I’m here taking an intensive beginner’s German course; it truly has been intense (6 hours of class a day), but I feel the effects already. While I doubt I’ll truly be fluent, I’ll know enough to (hopefully) survive when thrown out on my own into wild Saarbrucken in just 5 weeks. Moving here and adjusting has felt a little like a mental dislocation: that feeling when your mind can’t figure out where you are and tries to find something to latch back and hold it in place; that all you want is to just fit right back in and belong. I guess that, compared to most of the other (16) Fulbright students here, I don’t seem to be trying very hard to “Germanize” myself. I haven’t been taking trains to the neighboring towns, or trying out all the local foods… but what I’ve found to be amazing about being abroad are the long (though perhaps electronic) conversations with those back home, practicing violin in the music room (there’s only one, sadly), and taking long walks alone with my thoughts in the woods. Perhaps this is telling me that these things I do out of habit—violin, solitary hikes, reading, writing—are really part of who I am. That I would choose to do these things, and find a feeling of inner peace while doing them, perhaps indicates that it is when I do these things that I am in the right place (whatever that really means).
I’ve been searching—during these long walks among devilish fungus, blackberry brambles, and shadowy trees—for what people mean when they say that a gap year is a year to “discover yourself.” I don’t yet see how traveling all over the country and seeing new sights is a way to discover yourself. In fact, if you do it enough, I think it clutters and blocks out most of what you might discover. Of course, learning about other cultures (if done correctly) is an amazing opportunity for growth. But perhaps in order to grow from external experiences, I first need to figure out the stuff inside of me. How to do this? I have no idea. I feel like I think more about how I should think and learn about myself than actually doing it (meta-self-reflection, you might call it). But it’s a first step, I think?