Drove around West Haven last night and ended up in the beach… Feeling so nostalgic…
West Haven was the first town I lived in here in the US. I used to walk everywhere! A lot of days I would just wander around, no clear destination. I would sometimes get lost for hours trying to find my way back but I didn’t care. Last night, driving around, I felt like I was watching myself in those first moments — a stranger in a strange land. That feeling of freedom; you don’t know anybody and nobody knows you. It was oddly exciting and exhilarating …
Then I started making friends, meeting new people — from all walks of life, from places in the world I’ve never even heard of, from backgrounds so very different than my own. Now this place reminds me of them too — the laughter, the late nights, the early mornings, the debates, the discussions, the stories… The beauty of creating life-long friendships, of connecting with people you would never have met, of feeling like the world is a lot smaller because of them…
Here I cherished being alone and then celebrated being with people. Here I understood a little bit more about life, of how important it is to open your eyes and heart to humanity and all of its shape and size. Here I started to really acknowledge that life is not black and white — it is all kinds of gray. And if you look hard enough, if you really try to see with your heart, life is very, very colorful. Oh to walk down memory lane…
