June 22 11:20am

There is a Shel Silverstein poem that still floats around the back of my mind sometimes. The kind of poem that I don’t necessarily live by, but one that tends to show up more often than not, and often when I don’t expect it to. It chronicles the tale of a fellow who expected to simply splash in a particularly splashy puddle, but found himself sinking in the smallest, yet deepest lake.

Ireland feels a lot like that small, deep lake.

It parades as a puddle, a short, fun trip. No major urban cities. No extensive time or emotional commitments. Yet here I am, four days deep, and I can feel myself getting lost in the rising bubbles of conversation, the currents of the Cork streets. I guess it might be unfair to say that this was entirely unexpected. I had every expectation that Ireland would be beautiful, and fun, and splashy. My surprise comes at how deep it is. How I can feel every part of my life being slightly influenced by the choices I am making here and the situations I am experiencing.
Before I left home I spoke with an old friend form high school who had just returned from a trip to Nicaragua where she spent a month helping orphans learn English and rehabilitating women stuck in prostitution. Honestly, my heart dropped a little when I realized my trip had no philanthropic value—how are stories about drinking at pubs supposed to compare to that?—and I started to question how valuable my time here would really be.

Now, while I realize I’m not making any major strives in the social justice or world health fields, I think this trip will be rehabilitating in a different, perhaps more personal, sense.
And I can’t wait to get my feet wet. (303 words)

“glub—glub
he thought it was
the biggest puddle
He’d go splashing through.
Turns out it was
the smallest lake—
and the deepest, too.”
-Shel Silverstein