What it Costs

America is obsessed with time. Obsessed with not “wasting” time. All over the world --in countries America likes to compare itself to in terms of GDP, 9th grade math scores, and life expectancy-- students take a gap year, a time between high school and “what next?”. They travel.

Of course there are financial limitations to this rite of passage but it occurs to me that even among the wealthier in America, those that likely could afford such a luxury, the gap year has never caught on.

You could argue that Americans don’t "gap year" because we don’t travel overseas but I could argue that travel doesn’t have to be international, especially in a county as large as the United States. Maybe we have it reversed and we don’t travel because we don’t do a "gap year".

Whatever the reasoning order I think that logic is wrong, I think the issue is time.

Americans don’t take that year because then we’ll be “behind”. Behind who or what I am uncertain, only that whatever or whoever it is chases Americans throughout our lives. It is the reason people don’t take vacations even when finances allow, the reason we don’t take time between jobs – god forbid we have a gap in our resumes.

I fight the increasing volume of this narrative in my head everyday. A year out of the conventional job market while I traveled the map gorging on food and meeting interesting people, I worry I'm behind.  If I am, does the “lost” time trump the past year?

Fourteen countries this year: Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Japan, Netherlands, Croatia, Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, and Taiwan. A year of experiences. Was that really less valuable than a 9-5 that is really an 8-7?

I don’t think so.

I’m just ending my trip and beginning my job search. In a few weeks, maybe a few months, I'll begin to see if my decision to change up my life for a bit must be weighed not in the joy of the experience that I currently view it in, but instead in the context of loss...such a deficit-approach to living.

No matter what greets me on the other side of this year of living differently, I know that the “loss” Americans fear is double edged. The promotion, the job, the salary, are all potential losses...but I lost my dear friend Shoes, nine years ago. He was there one moment, laughing and drinking and making my life and the world a better place – and then...he wasn’t. Then he was gone. Medical school and studying and all the responsible things he’d done knocked off a motorbike taxi in the middle of Kampala.

Except he was in the middle of Kampala, Uganda; he’d traveled throughout India; he was living the life he wanted to live and not simply following the prescription counselors laid out before him. And so while I still grieve the loss of his unique brand of brilliant beauty in the world, I am also comforted that he hadn’t waited,  hadn't feared lagging behind...hadn’t waited to see or do or experience the world that was taken from him, that he was taken from, so suddenly.

This year has given me grace and laughter and perspective and friendship and challenges and tears and time and distance away from what is expected of me.

Back in America, searching for my "what next", I hope I remember what this year gave me instead of buying into the easy narrative of what it cost.