For some of us, it feels like only yesterday that we got back to Bates after winter break. For others, leaving the arctic tundra after six weeks is a welcome relief. To any of my fellow students who might be feeling homesick, know that you are not alone.
So, here’s where I’m coming from: After a life of wishing that I could escape my tiny town to discover something new and exhilarating, the overwhelming feeling of homesickness surprised me when I was a freshman at Bates. “Maybe,” I thought, “I am one of those people who will never be happy with what they have and where they are.” But I decided that this was not the case, because it wasn’t like I didn’t love Bates. I do, I swear! It was more of the getting away from my New Jersey hometown and the gaining of a wider perspective that allowed me to appreciate my roots and my college.
Back in high school, I was restless in the mundane routine of school and small town life. I think my wanderlust stemmed from the books I was reading—books that painted the world to be a colorful, limitless place. “Escape, escape, escape,” that’s what these novels were telling me to do. Or this is what the message I was reading between the lines.
Take, for example, my obsession with Jack Kerouac and his book On the Road. Here was a tormented, idealistic writer hailing from a small, New Jersey town. He embarks on an electrifying adventure, where he meets exciting people and sees incredible places, which changes him into a experienced traveller. It is no wonder that I identified with him. “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.” Preach it, Jack! I thought that’s what I wanted—no, not wanted, but needed. My egotistical high school self thought that I needed to take a tread “on the road” to find these fantastical individuals and experiences.
Furthermore, let’s talk about my relationship with Chris McCandless from Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild. Most rational readers question whether or not McCandless was selfish, or even delusional, to embark on an adventure that was so dangerous that it inevitably resulted in his death. Well, not me. I freaking worshipped the guy; every time I reread my increasingly worn down copy, I fell more and more in love with his philosophy — “The core of every man’s spirit comes from new experiences.” I craved these experiences. I figured, if I was staying true to Chris’ words, then my spirit was withering up and dying while I sleepwalked through my small town routine.
Okay, so flash-forward to Bates. The first half of the fall semester of college was everything I thought I needed, meeting people from all over the country. I pictured my new friends’ lives on the streets of New York City or in the rolling hills of Vermont or on the beaches of Southern California to act as the most dazzling childhoods that I could imagine. But, as time went on, and my life at Bates became my new routine, I realized more and more that people are still people, even if they grew up in Timbuktu and that the routine of life is still a routine even if I lived at Hogwarts.
By Christmastime of my first year in college, homesickness pervaded every bone of my body. I missed New Jersey and all its character, both good and bad. I missed Wawa milkshakes, I missed the whistle from a train making its way to New York City, I missed the universal glorification of Bruce Springsteen, the common understanding that the state is simply called “Jersey,” the smell of the salty shore air, and the immovable stillness of my sleepy little town after 11 p.m.
How could, after so many years of wishing for his escape, I love the place, truly and wholeheartedly? But I did. I still feel a tinge of regret that I was too starry-eyed to recognize the wealth of experience and adventure my town and its people offered me.
It took spending months away from home to appreciate it. With this new perspective, I am able go look back to the books that saved me in high school with fresh eyes. While I was restless in my sedentary, small life, my idealistic eyes seemed to skip over the end of On the Road. As a new reader, I realize that Kerouac actually ends the novel back in Jersey, while fondly holding on to the memories he made and the people he met while “rolling under the stars.” He allows these adventures to mold him as a different person, but they also ground him to his roots. Now, poor, poor Chris. I recognize now that he is less of a romanticized idol and more of a tragic hero. McCandless had a similar realization to my own—the realization that one needs a home and the support of people who love him to thrive. But this realization occurs too late, his last words of wisdom claimed “HAPPINESS IS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED.” He was too far-gone on his delusional adventure to return home, a mistake that I refuse to make.
Returning to Bates after Christmas break that first winter, I was comforted by the existence of my home. I would not have made it to my second semester of sophomore year without the knowledge that, as I am able to experience the world through motion, my hometown is going nowhere. This perspective has made breaks from school all the more precious. I am able to put New Jersey into my back pocket and consider Bates a new home. I won’t make the same blunder I made in high school and let my Bates routine blind me to adventures that exist in every college experience.
So, fellow Batesies, I hope you are enjoying your February break as much as I am. But one more thing…
As I come to terms with my origins and my present, I refuse to squash the parts of me that still desires adventure. While absorbing the gifts that experiencing the right-here, right-now can offer me, I will always be occasionally glancing to the horizon for new adventures that can further define me. And so should you.