It has now been well over a month since my passage through Mexico and its rich cultures. With that time, I’ve been able to reflect, decompress and once again integrate myself into my home society of the University of Washington. The sense of a new year, new beginnings, it coincides well with the end of such a life changing month. Yet with all this reflective thought, claims of new roads to travel, and new frames of view to see the world through, I can’t stop asking myself the question which has proven most difficult to answer. What has really changed since Mexico? Am I a new different person, changed for better or worse? Have these self proclaimed prophecies of a changed life really taken root or even shown evidence of themselves in my daily life?
That’s why this final return post comes so late, nearly a month and a half after my return. I look back at my field journal and see all these bright hopes of bringing back all this learning and yet I feel I’ve made no effort towards any of these goals. It’s almost disturbing when I think about how fast I returned to my seemingly complacent self within the first couple days back. I’ve heard all these stories of “reverse culture shock” and feelings of loneliness in your knowledge but to me, it seems just like “normal” life.
So after exhausting observations of my physical actions through the world, I turned to focus more on my psyche. It was there that upon closer examination which I could notice the subtlest of changes. These new thought patterns lay deep, where Mexico has embedded itself in my most routine and closely held behaviors. It’s in how I make an active effort to use less water, taking shorter and less showers, trying to wash dishes faster. It’s in pausing for the smallest moments to consider my every action from the lens of an outside observer. The reason I’ve been having so much difficulty with seeing the change is because that change has been so ingrained as to seem natural.
So the way I see things now is this. I’m a busy college student. I can’t expect so much to change so fast. I’m not alone in this experience either. It’s a quest to be taken with classmates and others who dare to journey abroad. A month and a half ago, seeds were sown. These seeds today are only just beginning to take root but given time, they will grow into the most beautiful of orchards. Plans are being made. Work in migration, queer activism, abroad, all seem within the sphere of my future when before, not even a field of work was clear. Not all change is apparent even when given time. I’ll just have to trust my gut to tell me what the future holds, how to take action, and that this trip really has registered new thought. In the end, it really is just a slightly different flavor of the everyday normal.
