All that you can't leave behind...

I always find it amazing how music can take you back… as poignant as a faint, but familiar, scent on the breeze. When I got home on Friday, Jack was playing U2 in the garage (because that’s all that’s good on my iPod, apparently :)). I really do enjoy U2, but it’s been awhile since I’ve listened to that album, and with it flooded back some of the best memories of my life…

Eight years ago, almost to the day, I was a happy 17 year-old kid, packing a suitcase for a place none of us had been. My life up until that point had been an incredible mix of highs and lows – but had mostly centered around the open gyms, cross country hills, softball fields, band buses, and freedom of one of the largest counties in Indiana. I had just returned from my first real overseas adventure, and although I had incredible time running around Madrid, Barcelona, and Paris, I had no idea what was in store for me in the coming month. No amount of map studying, e-mails, or information packets could have prepared me for the way my time in Israel changed my life. With my passport tucked safely in my bag and “All That You Can’t Leave Behind” spinning in my Discman, I settled down on the El Al flight and watched New York disappear into the clouds, not knowing then that I would come back to the States with a new passion for life and an emerging understanding of the world around me.

I must have listened to those 11 tracks several dozen times in the course of that summer. In my bunk the first few nights as the jetlag wore off, during ping-pong matches in the commons during our down time, while writing e-mails back home, on the coaches to and from all of the amazing places we visited that summer, while falling asleep on Asher’s shoulder as we rolled through the desert. And now, listening to them brings me right back there, and I can’t help but smile at the hundreds of incredible memories that link back to that album.

What I also find amazing is how much my life today parallels those best days of my life… new adventures, incredible friends, a shoulder that I can fall asleep on, challenging research that I’m passionate about, and a great big world that I am still only beginning to discover. I’ve varied my soundtrack dramatically since then, but I as I fall asleep tonight on this, the shortest night of the year, I can’t help but think that these songs will someday hold the same meaning as the ones from that U2 album. Life is good.