Do people change overnight? It's a question that has intrigued my senior year of high school, three years ago, when I posed the question to my father. Although he is most likely right, that the change isn't overnight, there must be some moment, some defining event that starts a change that eventually infects the entire being of the individual.

After studying abroad, I've been back in the United States for about two and a half months. Some people call it "reverse culture shock." I don't know what it is. But as the mediocrity and rote tasks of life continued to try to stifle and align me into some sort of decipherable niche in everyone's lives, I've monitored that this person, whoever it is that I became while overseas, is still here, still lingering waiting to escape once more. The question is, how, when?

I took the opportunity to study abroad in order to do some soul searching; to heal my soul, so to speak. While I was there, I experienced what may best be described as a sabbatical, but with more of an "intensive care for the soul" feel to it. I'd tried several times to impose some sort of spiritual renewal in myself several times, but to no avail. Yet while I was in this foreign land, almost like a dream on some isolated floating continent existing outside all time and space, I found that even though I didn't think I was changing all that much, that at the middle of the trip I conducted an introspective look at the past and realized that I was no longer the same person who got off the plane. The next question was, "how do I keep this change alive?"

In life, it's been my experience that the more we struggle to hang on to things, the more they seem to hopelessly slip through our fingers. My experience there was no different. As I changed, I realized that much of it had been the cause of meeting certain people, particularly one person. I had the unique experience of becoming quite close to arguably the most genuinely kind and caring person I've ever met. Perhaps the most interesting aspect about her was that she was an atheist. I was caught off guard and happy about it. And even though I would later learn that she was in fact agnostic and not an atheist, it didn't matter to me at all. She had already impacted my life more than she would know, and I loved her for being the person she was.

To quote the modern day prophet, Prince, "life is on big party and parties weren't meant to last."

But in all seriousness, things drew to a close as I knew they would (and should?), and what was left to my decision is how best to continue on with my experiences. I wish I could say that the answer to the situation was _____, but unfortunately I haven't gotten to that point yet. Maybe I'm not supposed to. My best attempts to describe it happened today as I walked around the melting mush of snow that's blanketed the area until recently. I was changing in the fall and struggling through winter. What will the spring bring?