I Don´t Know Why You Say Goodbye, I Say Hello

I´ve gotten really good at saying goodbye to people. A lot of it has to do with traveling, actually probably all of it. It´s one of the few instances in life where you make good friends incredibly quickly. I think it forces you to be a bit more open with the people around you. It´s hard showing up in a new place and because of a loneliness (a less depressing version of what people get in the States, not such a soul-rending experience), it´s hard to not be a little bit more open with the people around. This of course comes with the hard part of saying goodbye, I mean I´d say the majority of people I´ve met on my travels again, I will never again see in my life. It´s not something I like to admit but I think it´s true. I even think that I´ll probably see people more often because of a couple of things: I travel a lot, and I am really good at keeping in contact with people.

Without this ability I´m not sure I would have seen Gemma, Jeremy, Kim, Jimmy or anybody else again. I realize that it´s a small percentage of people that I´ve met, but still, it´s a handful of good friends that I wouldn´t have made otherwise. I think this trip will probably generate more of that type of friends because I am staying in places for a long time and the short friendships evolve into longer ones because I´ve been here for a few weeks/months. I think I like this style of travel better, the long term, stay in one place for a while. It allows for a better more home like experience. Plus here, I´m getting comfortable with speaking spanish with the people around.

The bad part, which still exists (even in situations like mine), is that there still are large groups of people that will disappear from life. I think this would really bum some people out, and it does to me too, but to a lesser degree. As you are probably aware, I have an incredibly active imagination and really like to think a lot about the chance encounters and paths crossed in life. When I was living in LA and going to school, I would often look in every car that passed me on the freeway (and there was a lot, I mean the 405 south bound is the world´s largest parking lot). I would try to envision the future of these people´s lives and if they would ever come to have a greater impact on my life apart from a fellow commuter stuck in a traffic jam. Has my future wife just passed me on the northbound side? Is that man going to be a future boss? Maybe that sweet old lady could be a neighbor in the future or is the grandparent of somebody I already know? I guess I just think about all the times you pass somebody and then one time you meet them. I mean how many times did I pass future friends, girls without knowing it before meeting them. I guess it´s weird to think about. I guess a lot of people could line this up to fate, and how life only has one path (you can´t really go back and live a different path can you? Not to say some parents don´t try with their kids). I definitely think about my one unique path, but I´m not so fatalistic I look at it as more of a luck of the draw. I mean you pass somebody so many times and each time you have a small probability of meeting them. For some it happens right away but others not. I mean Dan is one of my good friends and we both went to the World CUp game when the US beat Columbia (famous for the Colombian player scoring an own goal, then going home and getting shot outside of some nightclub by some crazed fan who shouted ´Goal´ after each shot. Soccer, it´s a bit crazy here). I didn´t become friends with him for another 11 years, and how many times in between did our paths cross? It´s just weird to think about. I guess I just try to make the most of it and keep the good friends in my life.

I do this kind of stuff all the time, but what traveling has allowed me to do, is imagine the lives of people I´ve met while traveling and try to envision where they are. There are a handful that I think about more than others. Two were bailarinas from the Netherlands that I met in Byron Bay (obvious reasons there), and the other is this Polish guy, Chris that I met on my first day in Europe by myself. He seriously saved me. I got to Budapest without any idea what to do, and absolutely nobody speaks english, I had no place to stay, and worse yet, no idea how to get into the city center. He recognized that I was lost and helped me get downtown, he turned out to be really cool. He played for the Polish National Baseball team and was only in Budapest for ninehours, waiting out a lay over before going to Crete. I got his email but never got a chance to say thank you because he seriously saved me. My trip could have been completely altered if it wasn´t for him.

So now I´m not really that afraid of Goodbye´s, because the friendship has been worth it every time.