Something Old and Something New
If there’s one thing I love about being a teacher, besides the obvious fame and wealth that go hand in hand with the profession, there is the prolonged opportunity for exploration and adventure. While summers “off” involve a whole lot more planning and curriculum development than outsiders may acknowledge, I am afforded the freedom to travel and linger, indulging in the opportunity to genuinely take the long way home, stopping to smell the roses along the way. That was literally the case earlier this summer as I drove out to the East Coast to visit family and friends with the intention of driving back across country with my son. As he enters into his Senior year, we both appreciated the prospect of spending some quality time together before he heads off to college just a year from now, road tripping across the United States father-and-son style. Were there generational moments where I wanted to strangle him for keeping his AirPods in or incessantly sending out “Snaps”? Did he have times where he wished I would just stop getting “all up in his ass”? Of course there were, but more than anything, it was a trip full bonding and enjoying each other’s company. And in the end, we both learned some vital lessons along the way. For me, that came in the form of remembering to fill my days, as is the case in the long-standing bridal tradition, with something old and something new.
On the first morning of our trip, we woke up at 6am and drove from my parents’ house in Laconia, New Hampshire to Colgate University, where I attended college from the Fall of 1989 to the Spring of 1993. Those were formative years in my personal development, and I cherish the time I spent there, though I had only been back once since graduation. As we neared campus, I could feel the weight of the experience upon me, as the enormity of my emotions almost overwhelmed me and I choked back tears of both gratitude and wistful remembrance of a time gone by. It was as if the Nostalgia character from Inside Out2 had been pumping weights while locked inside her closet, like some sort of hard-edged prison inmate, only to burst out of her seclusion and start bossing all of the other emotions around like she ran the place. I showed him where my roommate jumped out our second story window, landing awkwardly and twisting his ankle. I took him where same said roommate broke his clavicle and had to be taken to the infirmary after tripping over the curb while streaking across campus wearing nothing but ill-fitting face paint, proving once and for all that he was indeed both a klutz and an alcoholic. I pointed him to the tree where the infamous “rat incident” allegedly took place (if you have to ask, you don’t get to know). I expected my son to balk at having to endure all this self-indulgent reflection, but he genuinely seemed to enjoy it, telling me that he really appreciated the opportunity to see for himself where all my stories had occurred. It gave him, he said, an insight into who I am.
And as we sat there eating lunch outside the Old Stone Jug where I had put back my fair share of 25 cent beers, I realised that he was right to make this observation. This place did hold so much of the person whom I have become. Retreading those sacred grounds allowed me to make similar reflections on the journey I had made in getting to where I am now. Smiling in a moment of inspired epiphany, my thoughts came full-circle as I both learned from my own past and found inspiration for where the path may lead from here. Travelling with a companion who is himself about to embark on his own journey of self-discovery and academic pursuit, I realised that wisdom comes not so much from experience, but from reflection on that experience, the kind of reflection that comes to us when we venture back into the path we tread in the search of something old.
As we headed back out onto the road, we made our way up to I-90 and travelled west towards Niagara Falls. Even though the falls are only a three-hour drive from my old college, I had never made the excursion out to see them, either out of pure complacency or a sense of taking them for granted. But as we parked the car and started walking in the direction of the vista point for the falls, my son informed me that Niagara Falls had long been the American tourist destination he had most wanted to see. Coming into sight of the magnificent splendour that the sheer fall of the rampaging waters invokes, I immediately realised that I had been wrong to not make it here before this. As we donned threadbare, plastic rain ponchos that let in more water than a weeks-old sponge and walked the rickety staircases of the Cave of the Winds, I felt an elation that comes to us only when doing something we have never done before.
Life has a way, the longer that we live it, of making everything seem old hat. The drudgery comes from routine and repetition, an inherent necessity of daily human life. But what makes us truly feel alive, even in the wake of our increasing age, is the sensation derived in breaking out of our comfort zone and doing something new. Be it skydiving or driving a race car or simply going somewhere you have never been before, new experiences fill us with an exhilaration that is hard to replicate in our otherwise mundane existences. It provides a raw freshness that is the vital essence of what life is all about in the first place. For when nothing can give us that same thrill anymore, when nothing we do feels new anymore, that is the time to leave it.
As I walked out onto the observation deck and felt the tumultuous waters cascading over me, I was filled with a euphoria that has become less and less common as the years have progressed. It was a vital reminder to be sure to seek out new experiences, to be open to the wide array of possibilities the universe has to offer. For it is there that life resides, just waiting for us to come and join it.
Steven Craig is the author of the best-selling novel WAITING FOR TODAY, as well as numerous published poems, short stories, and dramatic works. Read his blog TRUTH: In 1000 Words or Less every THURSDAY at www.waitingfortoday.com
