"My momma always said, 'Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.'"
-Forrest Gump
Forrest Gump is easily one of my favorite movies, but I never really understood why until this year when I really opened up my box of chocolates and dug in. This exchange year has been an adventure through which I discovered so many new things about myself and the world around me.
"But Dina, you're a Filipino immigrant. You definitely had a change of chocolates when you moved to California!"
Of course I've tasted some chocolate before coming to Germany, but I was much too young to appreciate the change in flavor. I was at the undeveloped age of 4 when we moved, so the adjustment was fairly simple and other than speaking in an English-like gibberish for the first couple of months, I had no problems with integrating myself into the new country.
But experiencing such a change when one is 16-17 years old is a whole other story. I was so confident that I already knew everything about myself because I thought 16 years was enough to shape a human being. Dealing with the first two years of high school made me create a semipermeable mental armor that only allowed certain things to effect me. I'd passed Bio (proved by the reference to the cell membrane) and AP World History, so what else was there to learn?
Little did I know, there was everything else to learn. And there's so much more to come. This exchange year not only opened my eyes to much more than I had previously dismissed as irrelevant to my life, but it also taught me that I will never stop learning or changing. I've developed a thirst to uncover every secret in the word. And while I know that I will never achieve this goal, I've come to realize that it's the journey that matters.
One should look at life like their own box of chocolates. No one looks forward to the inevitable end, where the box is empty and all one is left with is a couple of stained wrappers and the aftertaste of memory, rather one focuses on the present and appreciates every piece of chocolate as its own delicious experience.
"But Dina, you're a Filipino immigrant. You definitely had a change of chocolates when you moved to California!"
Of course I've tasted some chocolate before coming to Germany, but I was much too young to appreciate the change in flavor. I was at the undeveloped age of 4 when we moved, so the adjustment was fairly simple and other than speaking in an English-like gibberish for the first couple of months, I had no problems with integrating myself into the new country.
But experiencing such a change when one is 16-17 years old is a whole other story. I was so confident that I already knew everything about myself because I thought 16 years was enough to shape a human being. Dealing with the first two years of high school made me create a semipermeable mental armor that only allowed certain things to effect me. I'd passed Bio (proved by the reference to the cell membrane) and AP World History, so what else was there to learn?
Little did I know, there was everything else to learn. And there's so much more to come. This exchange year not only opened my eyes to much more than I had previously dismissed as irrelevant to my life, but it also taught me that I will never stop learning or changing. I've developed a thirst to uncover every secret in the word. And while I know that I will never achieve this goal, I've come to realize that it's the journey that matters.
One should look at life like their own box of chocolates. No one looks forward to the inevitable end, where the box is empty and all one is left with is a couple of stained wrappers and the aftertaste of memory, rather one focuses on the present and appreciates every piece of chocolate as its own delicious experience.
You're fabulous. -Rachel
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