(First Steps)

In three weeks, I’ll be leaning on the railing in the fluorescent-lit main terminal of the Jorge Chavez International Airport in Lima, Peru, just outside the exit from customs, watching dazed and confused travelers walk into the cacophony of noise and bright lights as they legally enter Peru. I’ll be surrounded by taxi drivers who heckle tourists for a ride into the city and locals holding balloons and signs and flowers to welcome their loved ones back from a business trip to Buenos Aires, a wedding in Santiago, a year of college in New York. I’ll stand there, my own piece of calm amongst the chaos and hubbub of a large international airport, my legs beginning to ache from several hours of standing, waiting, until finally I see the first one. Between the businessmen and backpackers, I spot the first bleary-eyed high-schooler walk through the doors, read the sign I’ve been holding, and, in an instant, his tired and disoriented expression relaxes to a cool, teenage excitement.

I distinctly remember being in a similar situation the year after I graduated from high school. Flying into Quito, Ecuador – leaving my home country by myself for the first time – I landed in the dark, cool night in a totally foreign environment. I followed the swarm of other travelers – who all seemed to know exactly what they were doing, where they were going, which form to hand to whom  – as we snaked through the labyrinth of passport control, customs, and finally we were out. The doors opened and I was launched from the institutional calm of the airport’s underbelly to the overwhelming noise of the public welcome zone. I was greeted by a wall of Ecuadorian faces, staring at me and my flight-mates, all of us searching for any hint of recognition. Suddenly, like a toddler lost in the mall, I stopped in my tracks, terrified, desperately scanning the crowd, looking for any sign of recognition. A familiar face. The name of my homestay family. My own name. My heart pounded and my anxiety grew as I begin to imagine nightmare scenarios in which all this had been an elaborate scam and here I was, this poor, helpless, 18-year-old American, stuck in this big scary…

And then, all was well. I saw my name written on a sheet of office paper, a friendly looking Ecuadorian woman holding it, and what I assumed to be another volunteer standing next to her, a look on her face to suggest she had just been dropped on Mars. In a split second, my inner terrified toddler grew back into the teenager I was used to, interested only in reinforcing my own ego. Denying the terror I had felt moments earlier, I focused on proving to myself and those around me to prove that I was much more at-ease than the other volunteers. That I didn’t feel at all uncomfortable and out of place.

I’ve come a long way since that first moment of recognition. Though, at first, I used my teenage overconfidence to attempt to prove to both myself and my peers that I knew what I was doing, it took months, maybe years, before I accepted – and embraced – that discomfort that I first felt upon entering the airport. Before I realized that it could be great and meaningful and a source of enormous growth to leap into in a new and unusual environment. As I began to accept this, I found that I thrived off of these situations, lived for them. My moments of greatest growth, adaptation, and change came from leaping into the water, bracing for that ubiquitous cold shock of impact, and letting my instincts teach me how to swim.

Now, as I step out of the relatively comfortable bubble of almost two decades of education, I am once again faced with an inner anxiety over the uncertainty of the future. But one thing I do know: there is no one person waiting with a sign for me. There is no one moment of recognition that immediately will vault me out of the unknown. But as I’ve – hopefully – moved on from my self-centered, teenage world, I no longer have the same apprehension for the seemingly infinite paths that lie ahead of me. I greet the future with welcome arms. Because there is no one right path to be led down. There is no guide waiting to lead me, but instead I find a million friends, family, and strangers whose wisdom assures me that I haven’t wandered too far in the wrong direction.

And so, as I lean against that railing, I’ll think about the boy I was as a teenager and the person I have become in the years since. I’ll think about how amazing it is that these kids are even here. That they decided on their own volition to fly across the world to help others. That I get to play a  – hopefully – meaningful role in their lives for a few weeks. I’ll think about how they’ve voluntarily leapt into what is probably an entirely new and foreign universe. And I’ll know that if I can let just a few of them realize the power and growth that can come from that leap, then all of my own work will be worth it.