It’s been two years since we got back from our Semester at Sea voyage and I still think about it every single day. All it takes is a song, a sound, a scent, and I am immediately back in a life where waking up each morning meant the wide open ocean outside my window and the conviction that the day ahead would somehow, in someway be just as good, if not better, than yesterday. This feeling of joy and contentment was something I acknowledged every day. I knew how lucky I was to wake up feeling like that. I knew how lucky I was to spend my days like I did. I still do.
It’s taken me two years to finally work up the emotional threshold to watch all the footage from this trip. I think that will probably sound dramatic to many of you reading this, but for my fellow travelers out there who have experienced a journey like this one, I know you will understand. To those who do relate, I’d like to share the realization I have come to. I had avoided my “SAS Album” for so long partly in fear that it would lead me to compare my life between then and now, and partly because I didn’t want the grief of it ending to prevent me from moving forward and finding contentment and joy in new ways. After making this video and working on others, I’ve realized this: there is no “my life then,” and “my life now,” there is simply my life. Our voyage did not end in some book resting on some far away shelf; it is not an experience owned by other versions of ourselves in the past. That voyage is a part of me for the rest of my life. As is yours.
That feeling of waking up with a conviction for possibility is a mindset and one that is not entirely determined by what lies beyond your window. And though a nice view doesn’t hurt every once in awhile, it’s the people you surround yourself with and the person you are when you’re with them that makes life feel full of possibilities. I am 100% the person I am today because of the people in this video. So here it is: The people I love and the ship we got to call home for four months.
