I had a weird moment this weekend. I
was sitting by the fireplace in a beautiful colonial house that was built in
the 1700s in the middle of nowhere, New York at a book club with a bunch of old
ladies, eating English scones and discussing the art of hawk training and how
it relates to grief. I looked around and thought: “What the heck. How on earth
did I end up here?” And then I just smiled, laughed inside, and thought, “This is awesome. Life
is awesome.”
Because I’ve had this experience
many times before…
Like when I was sitting in the back
of a truck with my friend Julia driving with some Arab guys to the grocery
store in a small suburb of Amman arguing with them in Arabic that we could not
possibly eat any more.
Or after curling up in an Asian
sleeper bus for hours because I was too tall to fit comfortably and then
arriving at a tiny hostel in the most beautiful village I have ever been to only
to knock my friend’s face wash off the counter and have to stick my hand down a
Chinese squatter toilet to retrieve the bottle.
And then there was the time I danced
with a bunch of Special Olympians in the middle of a stadium packed with
thousands and thousands of people as fireworks exploded overhead and
celebrities and Olympic athletes cheered from a stage not too far from me
with cameras in all directions, a fanny pack around my waist, and a Jordanian
flag in my hand.
Or walking down an orchard row with
my best friends in the blazing summer heat of Central Washington while
wearing rubber boots and a chemical resistant jumpsuit, singing Ke$ha songs and
picking leaves from the apple trees in order to take them back to
the laboratory, brush the leaves onto a dish, and identify and count the
microscopic bugs to test for pesticide resistance.
SO many times throughout my life I
ask myself, “How on earth did I end up here?”
Sometimes I try to analyze and
understand how it all fits together and why my life is just a series of random
events. It can be frustrating when nothing makes sense and I have no idea what
on earth I’m doing. But then I just smile exactly where I am and think, “This is awesome. Life
is awesome.”
