Find a mountain, climb it, turn around, and look at your problems from a new perspective.
[Thursday - 02.06]
Public transportation is simply the worst (I say this because I spend a lot of my writing time on trains lately so it’s an easy target to take). We felt taking the overnight train to Switzerland would be smart and cost-efficient. Alas, our one-transfer trip has turned into a 3-hour wait in the one Starbucks open in the train station with three more transfers ahead of us. Not ideal. However, I have been recently repeating a mantra in my head that a bad day here is most likely still better than many good days at home. And I promised you, my devoted readers, that I would start being more positive and adventurous on this hiatus from the United State-us. It’s all about perspective, right? So, in that interest, I am quite thankful for the hot tub at the AirBnb that I will be making very good friends with in a few hours. THAT tip goes out to my father who sassed me for packing a bathing suit for my winter-semester study abroad. He doubted the ability of his beach-bred daughter to find somewhere bikini appropriate, shame on him
[Monday - 02.10]
Some of you may know, I am currently on track to pursue a graduate degree. Most of you do not know what it is I really want to go on to study. So, let’s fix that!
The human brain is a complete enigma, as we all well know, and I have been curious about it since the day I could understand what personal opinions are. I have many passions in life. In fact, I think it is valid to say I have passion for everything, just on varying levels. One of my first passions in life was always nature. In the fourth-grade, after I would get home from school, I would sit on my back deck in the fresh October weather, and listen to the birds. I told my mom I wanted binoculars and a book on bird species because I, in that moment, wanted to become a bird-watcher. Not only that, but the best darn 9-year-old bird-watcher there ever was. As you can imagine, that passion lasted a few weeks before I found a new one. Year after year I found new things to be intrigued by, things that sparked my curiosity, things that I may not have stuck with but that led me to a new passion – and I loved having new passions. Although these shortly-lived dreams were very different I realize now that, in each one, I was surrounded by nature. In middle school, I tried making the space under our Japanese maple tree in the front yard a place to sit and do homework. It felt cool to make my own space. In high school, I built a vegetable garden from scratch because I thought it would be fun and, the year after, I built a second one. I enjoyed the feeling of producing something on my own. I found peace and solace in wooded paths around town even though I hated bees (who seemed to like those paths too) but walking there cleared my head and made me feel safe. I guess what I’m trying to accomplish in this long-winded anecdote is that I would not have had any of these passions without my constant connection to nature. (This is where the graduate studies come in).
Humans need nature. We thrive in it.
Whether we want to admit it or not, there’s a certain flower that makes each of us gush and there is a certain nook in some random landscape that makes us feel at home.
Above anything else, trees give us oxygen and that is the least debatable thing I’ll write today. What I intend to study is the science behind this. Problems with attention deficit, mental illness, and cognitive development (I feel) directly correlate to our connection with landscape. In true, stubborn, Traub-fashion: I want to prove to everyone why I’m right. (This ‘blog’ thing is dangerous, it just gives me an excuse to talk about myself, uninterrupted, for as long as I want…I love it!).
So, in Switzerland this weekend, guess what I did? I went back to nature. I took a bike ride up to the most clear, blue lake I have ever seen and I drank the water from it. I haven’t died yet, so it wasn’t a bad decision in my book. Then, I went with my friends down a path. We don’t really know where it was leading, but we knew it was out of town and towards the beautiful mountains we were surrounded by. We found abandoned ruins with a stunning view, a wooded path that casted the most soothing shadows, and another great, beautiful lake. The sun was then setting over the Alps, the water reflecting each shade of the sky. Some people skipped rocks off the shore, some wandered along the waters’ edge and others – like me – just sat.
It was quiet and peaceful and rewarding to be sharing this experience with each other in the most individual ways we could.
After a quick photo-session and realization at how quickly the sun was actually setting, we headed back to the house to finish off our last evening.
In case I have not made it clear enough, this experience has been incredibly overwhelming for me. All of the feelings of calm and chaos that I feel simultaneously are so enjoyably frustrating. So, in a time where I felt like I was going to pop and I just couldn’t take what life was piling on, I found nature again. Sitting on this train ride back to Germany I feel refreshed and ready to jump head-first into finding new passions. I feel like a middle schooler underneath the Japanese maple tree in my front yard again, rearranging crocus leaves with a wood-chip. For the first time in weeks, I feel like myself again and, even without the degree, I think that’s proof enough for me to convince you to go find your favorite spaces and give them a little thank-you. You might not be who you are today if it weren’t for them.
- Jules
