By Joie Grandbois
You can’t unknow things. You can’t unhear or un-see or un-taste. Short
of full on amnesia, once you have an experience it is there, imprinted
in your mind forever. Oh you might lose some of the details and over
time the memory may change, but it doesn’t go away. You can’t unlive
it.
The first time I had this experience was when I was ten years old and
I discovered what nuclear weapons were and the destructive power they
had.
I remember being so angry that these weapons existed. I was
angry at my parents for not telling me about it and at the same time I
was angry at the person who told me about them, because now that I
knew, my world was no longer the safe place I thought it was. I found
myself wishing for ignorance and the ability to unknow of their
existence.
There are other experiences though. The ones that open our eyes to
the wonder of the world; that make us realize what a wildly diverse
and beautiful place it is. We hope to remember every detail. These
are the experiences that leave us with a desire to know more. I spent
my fall semester having just such an experience.
On September 13, 2015 I boarded the MV World Odyssey, a 500 foot, nine
deck ship that would be my home for the next 100 days. During those
100 days I visited 11 countries, four continents and two oceans. I
crossed the Atlantic and the equator, twice, and travelled through the
Panama Canal. I shared this experience with over 600 other human
beings.
Since my return in December I have tried many times to summarize the
experience. To explain that yes, while it was amazing to see all
those different countries and there are several I want to visit again,
what I really fell in love with was the sea.
Or that the night I looked up into the sky and saw unfamiliar stars I had the urge to
count them, all the ones I didn’t know, because I thought I’d surely
one day forget exactly what I saw but I might remember the number.
Or that moment that I was walking in Salvador, following bad directions
to a record store when the samba drums began to play; drums I could
not see yet their sound surrounded me and I was immersed in rhythm. I
swore then that I would return to Brazil.
And that is what comes with some types of knowing. That feeling of,
“I’ve not had enough of this place, this town, this music, this food,
these people…this ship…this experience.” And knowing that you want to
find…no, you WILL find a way to know more. To keep taking in knowledge
and experience until there is no room left in your mind to contain it,
while praying that your mind is an infinite space.
Leave a Reply