Watching a handful of sheep graze nearby while the rest of our troop huffed and puffed their way up the rest of the path, I was left with that subtly familiar sentiment one finds themselves grappling with having fallen over the cusp of a big life change: if you had told me a year ago, or even senior year of college me, that I would be starting a life in my fourth country in five years, I would have laughed and never believed a word. And yet, here I was, standing on a hill in county Louth – Ireland’s smallest county – watching the sun go down next to my now exhausted companions.
As my peers in my MSc course in Global Mental Health at Trinity sat around me, it appeared that mental fortitude, rather than physical stamina, was our preferred forte based on our climbing performance. We had spent the day on a journey to a pumpkin patch (note: difficult to find in the middle of the Irish countryside) and stopped by Carlingford to make Halloween decorations that evening and were quick to blame the excursion to excuse our poor performance. One of my classmates was a local from the town of Ardee and had invited us for a weekend stay with his family (full Sunday Irish roast, Gaelic football match, chippery and all). Finding myself outside of Dublin for the first time since crossing the Atlantic, I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding in the first few weeks of settling in.
It’s not that I wasn’t comfortable being in large cities – as a native New Yorker, truly it was anything but. Yet, I hadn’t still fully let myself go since my arrival, almost too aware and conscious of my new Irish surroundings. Did I like it here? Did I make the right choice? Did the people here like me? Was I going to make the most of the opportunity I had been given? Making my way through the busy streets of Dublin, whether on my way to a volunteer shift at the National RehabilitationHospital or meeting friends at McSorley’s for Thursday night pub quiz, I hadn’t given myself the opportunity to slow down and actually form answers to these questions spinning around in my brain.
I’ve always been an overthinker – someone who needs to look at all the evidence, know every potential option and compare them in order to feel comfortable finally choosing a path forward. In many ways it’s served me well, sure, as if I’m nothing if not thorough, with all dotted i’s and crossed t’s. But frankly, this mindset has also removed some of the spontaneity, spirit, and courage that have proved essential and crucial to my life’s most fruitful and fulfilling choices. Even as a man of science, attempting to recognize this by taking the plunge and coming to Ireland was a leap of faith.
And so as I let the full exhale leave my lungs, breath condensing softly in front of me and coiling wispily around my hands, I was struck by the uncharacteristically straightforward nature of my own thoughts: yes. For now, whatever the question was, the answer was yes. While I may have written this entire blog post about a moment composed of only a few seconds, to me it spoke of something greater and more fundamental. Surrounded by new friends in a new and beautiful place, the uncertainty would remain but more importantly would the joy in chances taken, bonds forged, and experiences had. And, even if just for a moment, that was enough for me.
