Paris, Je T'aime

Paris, Je T'aime

Recently, while thinking over my time spent in Paris, I realized that, shamefully, I have taken no more than a dozen photos of the city I've been living in for the past five months. It's not that I don't have a camera (I bought myself an expensive Nikon a week before I came) and it's not that I haven't seen some amazing things (the sun setting pink and green over the gold top of Invalides, the river in the rain raging brown against blue against the sky, smiles and light, windows and night, just to name a few...) I just never seemed to have my camera on me at the right time. When I was traveling, I was ready every day. I have hundreds of pictures of Dublin, Berlin, and Spain. But Paris, this place I've lived, no more than a few early shots of my apartment? At first I was disgusted, then disappointed, then suddenly sad. But then I began to realize it didn't matter as much as I thought it did. Those moments, those picturesque shots, though not captured on film, will always be in my memory. Though I may not be able to look back on them physically, I will be able to transport myself back, mentally, and see them, be there, feel them all over again. It's maybe even better, to not have wasted my time clunking around with a camera, and instead to have lived it all, cemented it in life experience. Because that's what this semester was about. Not bringing home photos to show off to my friends. Not setting up shots while the world moves around me. But living a new life, being in another world, and breathing in with every breath every bit of it around me.

I'm happy to say that's what I think I've accomplished. I have made friends and memories, seen beauty and bad, and done it all with my eyes open and lighted to the glory of living in a new place. I have a life here, one that will always be with me, traveling in my memory, in my being, in myself. I will look back on this time, revisit Paris and remember, walk down my street looking up at my old apartment windows  remembering the laughing nights I'd once spent inside. I'll walk past the school and peer inside the blue doors wondering what may be happening behind them, tour the neighborhood again and visit those same old restaurants at which I'd once dined, and wined, and smiled. I'll remember the city when I revisit it when I'm old, as the place I came when I was young, the place I turned twenty, the place I grew up. To me, that's what this program has been about. Not taking pictures or seeing sights or perfecting the language (though that is a plus). But living, seeing the world, becoming more of a person. It is only through seeing the rest of the world and the rest of the people that live in it, that we can even begin to understand our own place in the world, and understand our own life's potential. That is what I've learned being here. And to me, that knowledge is priceless. There may be ways I could've done better, more things I could've done, more pictures I could've taken. But to me, it doesn't matter. Looking back on these past months of my life, there's not a thing I would change of my life in Paris.