La semana en una reflexión breve (The Week in Brief Reflection)

(Monday, June 8, 2015)

9,000 feet above sea-level, the world has a way of changing— the air is thin and cool and teases my shallow Maryland lungs that want a bigger—"MORE, please!"— taste. Time, too, is different. It moves with the drift of the clouds which keep constant company with the crowns of our heads— "I have clouds in my hair, mom!" I think we all do, and I'm already nostalgic for the feeling.

Nostalgia, I believe, is a distinct melancholy that plagues those privileged enough to have loved and lost. A piece of my most recent privilege has been spending five days with the youngest generation of the Huantuc-loma community in Ecuador. Five days is just long enough to find a groove and just short enough to worry it didn't leave an impression.

I have decided, though, that such a worry is a somewhat egotistical and a partially misguided one. Leaving an impression is superficial. Feeling an impression is profound. I have felt an impression. I think most of us have, and I wouldn't change the privilege of this melancholy for anything.

-Haley Wessel