On
my second day in New Zealand, I was in a town called Rotorua. My study abroad program was having
orientation there, and things were still a bit uncomfortable between the twenty
six of us. Everyone was still getting to
know each other in the midst of the brutal jet lag that we were all
enduring.
For lunch that day, a few of
us decided to go grab some pizza. I
wanted to eat inside, but the rest of the group wanted to go have a “picnic” at
the park down the street. I was hungry, and at that point I was just ready to do whatever it took to get everyone to sit down and finally eat. We got our pizza and headed to the park in expectation of a very calm atmosphere.
As we came closer to the park, we began to hear a symphony, and we could see a large crowd in the distance.
We arrived at the park to find the Auckland symphony performing for the town. We sat down in the grass, ate our pizza, and looked around in awe of the liveliness of the locals.
After we were finished eating, we walked over to the lake behind the stage, and found that it was teeming with black swans. It was sunset at this point, and the water had this unexplainable sense of calm about it. We sat in silence as the symphony played in the distance, and we watched the black swans over the calm of the water.
I thought to myself in that moment “I’m glad I didn’t stay inside.”
As
much as I wanted to have control and eat inside that day, that’s just simply
not what happened. I was subject to my
surroundings. I was controlled by the
world around me, and it was beautiful.
It was on that day when I realized that there truly was something
backward about “seizing the moment.” I
realized that I can’t always seize the moment.
Maybe none of us can truly seize the moment. Maybe the moment seizes us.
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Find out more about Mark's ISA Dunedin program at http://studiesabroad.com/programs/country/new_zealand/city/dunedin
Search for study abroad opportunities like these in over 50 other countries: http://studyabroad.uark.edu/search
