Something Significant - a Study Abroad Experience

“You don’t have to qualify that statement.”

“You could have just stopped at ‘I surfed in California.’”

“You don’t have to say that other part. Just stop at saying you can speak Pashto.”

Within the first week of coming to Jerusalem I was asked the question, “what do you want to get out of this study abroad experience?” And I said, “I don’t know. Something significant, I guess.”

Here I am. I have learned something significant. Very significant. It’s about how I think about myself. I didn’t know what I wanted out of this at all, but what I have come away with is a much, much greater understanding of myself that I did not have prior to being here. I have a lot of flaws. One of them is explaining myself by bringing myself down to other people. Like saying “I have a lot of flaws” within the first page of a free-writing experiment. That is something that is worth knowing about myself. I am not special. That is something else worth knowing about myself.

What I have learned is about how to carry myself. How to conduct myself in the way that people view me, because how they view me is how I portray myself and I should not be surprised when they pick up on that. I go to the gym, therefore I’m big and strong. I don’t have to be surprised any time someone says, “wow, you’re so big and strong.” It’s not necessary. The ego has been stroked. I can get over myself. I can get over people admiring me – because it was so different and unexpected and not normal for me to be admired in that way or be noticed when I was younger and less impressive. But I’m noticed now. I wanted to be noticed, now I am.

I sat at a 24/7 café in Jerusalem with a beautiful girl from Manhattan. We talked. I held my cool. She was about a million somethings out of my league. This is not a chick that I would usually have the guts to approach. But earlier in the night we had caught eyes. She smiled. She was drinking red wine and reading a book. I texted my friend about her, I said something along the lines of: “There’s this gorgeous girl here at the bar. We’ve been making eyes. I think that if I don’t try to talk to her I’m going to regret it.”

So I asked if I could join her for a drink. She was busy reading. I said, “no worries, I’ll leave you alone.” A while later, working on a paper, we continued to make eye contact. I left to use the bathroom and she smiled at me as I returned and said, “I think I’m ready for that drink now.” We talked. It was a very good conversation. She was one of these “young urban professionals” we hear about so often. The yuppies. Her name was Madeline and she had gone to school at Cornell for financial management. She was upper-crust, clearly. Beautiful, obviously smart. She had just quit her job 3 weeks prior in order to travel and photograph. Her photography was good. She was talented.

One of the bartenders bought a round for the other Americans around the bar. I subtly let it drop that I was in the Marines – I didn’t actually mean to do this. Someone said “cheers” to me and I let out a hearty “Semper Fidelis,” a phrase which I use almost exclusively when I’m being sarcastic. She didn’t seem phased. She was ice cold. Rock hard. This was a girl who knew who she was, what she wanted. She was intimidating, and she was protective of herself. Maybe she’d been hurt recently. Why else would you quit your upscale job in one of the most important cities on Earth in order to go read a book at a bar in Jerusalem and talk to a stranger?

I tried my best to keep my cool. I wanted to talk to her but I didn’t want to seem too aloof. I wanted to know about her but I didn’t want to pry and seem too eager or interested.

The conversation meandered. I thought it was something out of a romance novel or movie – not sitting with her and talking at the bar, although it would have been a nice place for that novel or movie to pick up. Record scratches. Voice over: “yeah, that’s me with that beautiful talented girl. You’re probably wondering how I got here.” It seemed romantic because who does that? Who just quits and goes? That takes guts. That’s how stories are written.

She asked me what I was studying for, I said “my future.” I thought it was a funny quip while simultaneously being the most honest answer I could provide. See, even at 26 I’m still figuring out what I want to be when I grow up. I don’t like that. I have notions in my head about what women find attractive, and I like to think that a guy that knows where he’s headed is more attractive than a guy who doesn’t. Whether this is true or not, I guess I’m still not sure. But I don’t like it that I don’t have a direction and a plan. I have an idea of a direction, but I’m overloaded by choices and regrets of bad decisions.

What am I going to do? Try to join the army? Back to the Marines? Is the military even in the cards? What about firefighting? Police work? Do I want to go to Afghanistan and teach English while learning my Pashto again? Do I want to try and network and do photojournalism? Conflict photography? War correspondence? Is journalism a passion of mine? Is photography worth pursuing? Is anything worth having really ever easy to come by?

She asked me what I want to do. I said, “I know it’s not very glamorous, but probably work for the State Department in the Bureau of Diplomatic Security.”

Her response?

“You don’t have to qualify that statement.”

It’s something I do unconsciously. I would have regretted not talking with this girl. Not just because she was beautiful, smart, talented and a complete catch, but because it was such a simple lesson that no one had ever taken the time to teach me. She may have been the first to teach me this while in Jerusalem, but she wouldn’t be the last. I’ve had a few remediations of this lesson since then.

I was born and raised for 19 years in Minnesota. Being 19 was only 7 years ago but who I was then is not who I am now and I’m not sure I would recognize myself in terms of how I thought about myself and life.

For some reason, after the Marines, I struggled a lot with viewing myself with value. If I’m not a Marine then what’s impressive about me? What’s cool? What’s intimidating? What’s of value? Nothing, as far as I was concerned. Nothing to show for my service, nothing to show what I’m moving towards. I worked weekends as a security guard and went to school during the week. I spent time at open mics – comedy and music. I drank. I used tobacco.

It’s actually all pretty average. And what’s so bad about being employed and going to school? So it’s not going on combat operations in Afghanistan and speaking Pashto and hanging out with gunslingers and your best friends every day. It’s not that challenging. But working and going to school is totally average, normal, and fine. Most people are average. That’s the definition.

Not only have I been feeling like I’m not that impressive, but that I have to explain myself when someone might think I am impressive. A girl I saw very briefly before going to Jerusalem thought I was intimidating. Big. Strong. Smart. Interesting. I had to explain to her that I was actually full out doubt, not confident, pretty big and strong and pretty smart, but not as smart as some people and not as big as other people. That I had done a lot of stuff wrong, that I made mistakes.

Guess what?

That girl got over me and went back to her ex.

People keep telling me, “oh that’s nothing you did. She was young, she had an ex-boyfriend, what can you expect?” I can expect that if I’d kept my head on I would probably be seeing that girl now. I gave her a reason to go back to that dude.

The point is, I qualified myself. I qualified myself to people who don’t deserve a qualification, or any explanation, and it bums them out. They see a sad person with a shitty view of themselves, and people don’t want to be responsible for that. People don’t want to take on the responsibility of saving that person. They don’t want to. They don’t need to! So, it’s time to stop being that little baby who shows off to the world, “I have all these great qualities, but I actually hate myself. Don’t you want to date poor little broken me?” Of course they don’t. The only people who want to play that role of the savior are people who are just as broken and screwed up as you. They can’t fix themselves so they want to fix someone else in order to feel better about themselves.

What does this look like in action? It’s a subtle thing but it tells people so much about you. Girls definitely find me attractive, and I should learn to take advantage of that. Not advantage of the girls, but advantage of the fact that girls probably would like a guy like me to talk to them. I don’t need to qualify myself.

I was speaking with this cute girl from my school in Jerusalem who (I had a feeling) was into me. I had been talking with her after class and somehow my living in California in the past got brought into the conversation. She said, “with the tan and the hair and everything you definitely look like you would’ve been a surfer.”

Can you guess what I said?

“Oh, yeah I did surf for a bit but I was terrible at it.” Yo, shut the fuck up! Quit digging on yourself man. This is why no one wants to make fun of you because you fuckin’ already destroy yourself on a daily basis, my dude. What the fuck? People pity you because you pity yourself. Quit it. No one is attracted to a giant wuss like you flapping in the wind.

How do you expect she responded to my qualification of my surfing capabilities?

“You could have just stopped at ‘I surfed in California.’”

She probably had a view in her mind of a dude surfing, and that made me more attractive to her. But then I told her I was bad, and the view she had left in her mind was a dork with a snorkel in a kiddie pool getting splashed. I asked her to get a drink with me later, she initially said yes, and after a bit of thinking about it she said, “it probably wouldn’t be a good idea.” Now, this one I don’t think can be explained simply by some dumb side comment about surfing on a one-off conversation, but taking myself down a peg didn’t do me any favors.

“Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who other people are today.” Just because I sucked at surfing doesn’t mean that I need to tell anyone that. I did surf. I tried. Already, how many other people can say that? I’m already in the minority of folks who even looked at those waves and thought, “I’ll risk drowning.” And that’s my biggest fear, man! Look at that! That’s why it’s rad! I am scared of drowning and yet I still took a shot at surfing.

I did like it. I tried to get up. I got thrashed by waves. I drank a shitload of seawater. No one cares. Very few fucking people on earth are immediately great at something. Just because you are bad at something just means you haven’t tried enough at something. Or worked hard enough. I can sing and play the guitar. I was awful at guitar at first. Like most people are. I’m a good singer, my guitar playing is pretty decent. I don’t need to feel bad about my average skill level in guitar because fucking Keith Richards or Dave Navarro or whoever else exists.

Just because I’m not Kelly Slater doesn’t mean I have to feel bad about the fact that I went out and I tried something new and got thrown by waves. I’m not the best climber at the bouldering gym. No one gives a fuck, man. Everyone started somewhere. I like motorcycles, do I have to feel bad because I’m not Valentino Rossi or Marc Marquez racing all around the world on the MotoGP circuit?

Emphatically: no.

No one is demanding that you qualify yourself and your experiences.

What’s the best motorcycle? We could talk about engine size, single or double overhead cam shafts, single inline or V-Twin. Fuel injected or carbureted. Brand. Build. Cruiser or sport? Street bike or dirt bike? Ducati, BMW, KTM, Harley, Triumph Suzuki, Honda, Kawasaki? Do you know?

The best motorcycle is the one that you have.

What I’m trying to say is that my experience may not be the best. I may not be the most skilled. But the beginning point of building any skill is having no skill. The only way to have any experience is to first risk having an experience. Unless you’re a prodigy: and those are exceptional people. By definition. And we are bombarded with exception every single day. It is difficult to view yourself as something worthwhile when everything tells you, “being exceptional is worthwhile.”

I went out to lunch with my buddy, his cousin, this cute girl we climbed with and her friend. The girl’s friend, MJ, seemed a bit intimidating. And I actually got the sense from him that he was competing with me somehow. I don’t know. People pick up on vibes. He dropped it casually that he’d been to boot camp, or talking about reserve service. I think he was working in financial management or financial analysis. Something that will be a lucrative career. Well, somehow my own military experience got brought up. I was in the Marines. He asked, “where were you stationed?”

I said, “In California and I deployed to Afghanistan in 2014.”

His response? Even though he already gives off an air of being a successful dude heading for a successful life?

“I feel like I haven’t accomplished anything.”

That is something that I need to understand. My military service is impressive to some people. Maybe to other vets it’s average but being in the military, in the US, is an exceptional quality. Being in the Marines is exceptional. People are impressed by that. It doesn’t need to go to my head, but I should at least be cognizant of the fact that it isn’t nothing. We continued to talk and my Pashto skills got brought into question somehow, and he said, “oh wow you speak Pashto?” I said, “Ehhhh, hmmm, ehh, well. No. Yes. Kind of. I could. I can’t anymore. I used to be able to speak it really fucking fluently and now I can barely understand anything.” What was his response?

“You don’t have to say that other part. Just stop at saying you can speak Pashto.”

If being in the military is exceptional, then so is being bilingual in a language from the other side of the world. Don’t downplay that. It’s cool! It is impressive. The only person that ever qualifies these things is myself.

I am my own worst enemy. This is what I’ve learned.

I portray a confident, strong, capable, young man because I am a confident, strong, capable, young man.

I do not have to qualify my life and experiences to anybody. I don’t have to downplay myself, and I absolutely should not.

That’s a big deal to understand these things about yourself. It takes a lot of introspection, reflection, and self-critiquing.

I’m happy to say that I got something significant out of my study abroad experience.