Summer Time and The Living is...Different

It is 3:30 pm, 8:30am EST on Sunday July 6th. I just opened and email from my Mum. As is often the case, her comments made me think/ panic a little. She reminded me that for the first time in my life I am not spending the summer in the country. I came to terms with this notion a long time ago. But it is still strange to think that there will be no late nights in Jeremy’s boathouse, no DW at the Knowlton Pub. No painful mornings of coaching or sailing through my self-induced headache from the night before. No Sunday Races, although Gabe and I plan to continue our Labor Day domination.
Thinking of the country has made me reevaluate my reasons for coming to Beirut. I tell people that I came here to try my hand at journalism and to learn as much about the region as possible. This is true. But mostly I came to grow up. I think I have always viewed the country as my own Neverland, as a place where age does not matter. It has been the one constant place in my life. No matter where I have lived the country has been there. To add to this I have, for the most part, had the same wonderful friends since I was eight years old. Slowly the group has expanded and added new members, but the dichotomy with which each individual relationship was built has stayed the same. All of us have grown, matured and developed, but the country seems to somehow negate these changes, turning us into the same little kids we met as.
I have always and will continue to relish my summers at SBYC. They are, to me, the perfect and most ideal summers a child could have. I think to a certain extent SBYC and the country were such a big part of my life, and so important to me that for the last couple of years I have been hesitant to leave, scared that my departure would signify the end of my youth. Subsequently I developed this Peter Pan instinct, a desire to keep the real world at bay. It was out of fear that I decided to come to Beirut. I felt my Peter Pan persona was beginning to define me and affect me not only during the summer but the school year. I created this cocoon of youth that made whatever I was presently doing most often work, less important and almost inconsequential. Beirut is my attempt to jump out of this bubble, to embrace the real world in the Now and take responsibility and pride in whatever it is I am doing.
I am going to post more about what beirut is actually like shortly.
peace peace,
Willy