The Good Stuff
My grandparents own a house in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. I’ve lived there at several points in my life, either while working the kitchen of a local restaurant or lifeguarding at Head of the Meadow Beach. At times, the house feels more like a hotel. Different weeks yield different guests. My grandparents — busy as ever — race around the house between visits. My grandma (Bima, Sweet Sue) cleans, gardens, paints, cooks, and prepares rooms for our ever growing network of family and friends. My grandfather (Big Bud, Dick, DR3) runs around outside like a madman constructing additions, erecting the property’s iconic tipi, and doing other crazy sh!& that results in wrecked backs and rotator cuffs.
Sometimes the visits go well; sometimes they don’t. However, they nearly always contain at least one discussion at the small round table just outside the kitchen. I have the image permanently etched in my mind: the dim light of a single chandelier, a bottle of [nearly empty] red wine, dominos scattered across the surface, laughs and lectures, and my ageless grandparents with whomever the hotel beckoned to the outer Cape that week.
It’s at this table where great conversations happen: conversations about my grandfather jumping out of planes with the Special Forces, stories about my grandparents driving across country with my dad and his two brothers jammed in the back seat, or thrillers about that time a gun ostensibly saved all of their lives on the open road.
Moving to Colombia has given me a lot of flashbacks to my time in Thailand. Recollections of my coworkers getting lice, getting assaulted by ants while asleep in my hammock, and having a gun pulled on me are just a taste of the trials we tolerated.
A lot of good things happened to me in Thailand too. I saw some pretty sites, swam in some pretty oceans, and did some other pretty touristy stuff. However, this predictable amalgam of waterfall chasing, island hopping, and Instagram filtering doesn’t nearly compare to the aforementioned hardships that truly test the human spirit, aka The Good Stuff (OMG he said the title!!!).
When I recount my time in Southeast Asia, it’s rarely to describe the way the monoliths reflect off the water as the sun sets; you can find that on Google. In fact, I’ll do it for you. Rather, the 10-hour historical epic of my voyage by ferry, plane, bus, and taxi with the stomach flu and an affinity for toilets is both much more exciting and more likely to be remembered, recited, and rehashed time and time again. These experiences aren’t for luxury, and — as I’ve said before — leave your delusions at immigration.
I’m grateful to have this perspective now as I continue along my still inchoate journey as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Conditioned to first-worldism, one can find it rather easy to scoff at a bucket shower, losing power regularly, or other quirky nuances one might experience when challenging themselves.
However, these are the best experiences — experiences that push your limits, shred your comfort zone, and make you take an external look at yourself and think “What the fuck is this crazy experience we call life?” The good stuff can have you laughing uncontrollably about how frail the human experience really is. The good stuff gives you perspective.
And most importantly — at the end of the day — when you’re sitting at your small round kitchen table in 30 years, the five star hotel you stayed at in Aruba is going to be a dull and distant memory, a haze of repetition amongst the other beachside breaks you’ve regularly repeated to escape the mundane. It’s the good stuff, the time you were thrice attacked by a dog in a local restaurant (speaking from experience here), that’s going to stick with you.
