A Reunion Of Friends

My trip to Norway was just last month, but this story begins ten years ago. Let me share with you a memory.

In August 2006, I arrived in the Big Apple to begin life as a college student at New York University. Bright-eyed, young, and mostly naive, I entered the NYU campus in Greenwich Village full of eagerness and excitement (and probably some anxiety). The first-day-of-school atmosphere was palpable - the sight of lost students frantically looking for their classrooms, the sound of incessant and indistinct chatter among classmates, the piercing honks by bikers and taxis at pedestrians too engrossed in their phones, and the eccentric man in Washington Square Park who yelled at everyone not to be late to class. I remember it all, very well.

At Stern, the business school, each class year is typically about 500 students. So, there we were, 500 freshmen sitting in an auditorium for orientation, the class of 2010, ready to become the future business leaders of America (or so we were often told). We sat through some introductory speeches, a few inspirational talks, and a PowerPoint presentation with too many buzzwords, and then we were dismissed to start some group activities. In order to give us opportunities to meet people and make friends the school randomly assigned us to groups of 30 to 40 called cohorts and each was named after a Manhattan neighborhood. My cohort was called Chelsea.

We had our first cohort meeting in an underground classroom. I picked a random seat in the middle rows and sat next to a few strangers. Their names were Yidan, Michelle, and Insuk. I don’t remember much about what happened during that first meeting (some discussion about where to spend the money that each cohort is given), but I do remember the ice breaker we did. We played the Silly Name Game. You’ve probably played it at least once in your life, most likely in elementary school (“Hi, I’m Gameboy Garland, and that was Jolly-Rancher Jenny and Power Ranger Paul and…etc.”).

Yeah, a bunch of 18-year-old business students/future leaders of America couldn’t come up with anything better.

So, we started playing the game and it got to our row. I remember my fellow seatmates and I somehow ended up picking disease-themed names. It started with one and then we all just naturally followed suit (Yellow-Fever Yidan, Gonorrhea Garland, Malaria Michelle, and…darn it, I don’t remember Insuk’s. Let’s just pretend it was Influenza Insuk). I don’t remember how far we got, or who won, or any of the other 30 odd students’ names. But I remember the ones of those who eventually became my best friends (minus Insuk, sorry). After that day, the four of us stuck together, for the next four years. We called each other by our normal names.

Until Norway, it had been years since I saw them after graduation. We’re all over the world now, each of us in different cities. But a decade since we first met, we still keep in touch and see each other every now and then. What binds us are fond memories of our days at NYU, a common love for travel, mutual understanding & respect, and the ability to be absolutely genuine in each others’ presence. So, when they invited me to join them on a trip to Norway this August, I jumped on the opportunity. A college reunion in a country that’s been on my travel list for years, and in the summer? Count me in. I didn’t even bother planning anything because I knew no matter what happened, it was going to be a good time with my friends (Insuk wasn’t there, but I saw him in Seoul recently).

A WORD OF TRUTH

I left for Norway on August 1st, a Monday. But, let me backtrack a bit and share some thoughts I had right before I left. The day before, as I usually do on Sundays, I went to service at my church in New York. We had a guest speaker that week, Pastor David from Boston. His sermon was titled “Remembering God.” I won’t rehash the sermon, but in essence, it was about why the act of remembering God is crucial to a Christian’s identity. His driving point was that it’s important for Christians to remember God, to actively recall moments with and memories of God, because doing so affirms a Christian’s identity. Distilled to a broader context, memories and identity are profoundly connected.

Whatever religion you believe in, it’s a universal truth that our memories are part of who we are. Good or bad, joyful or painful, they shape us and our paths. It’s knowledge that we bring off the shelves of our minds whenever we make a calculation, a comparison, a judgment, a decision. Memories are as much a part of your identity as the name you’re given, perhaps more.

So what does all that have to do with Bergen, with this trip?

I’ve thought about that week in Norway a lot since returning to New York. Trips and places like these don’t just come and go in your mind. They stay, lingering in the recesses, resurfacing at the least expected of times and at the most needed of times. They’ll come back, long after you’ve stepped off the return flight. You don’t forget a place as beautiful as Bergen, as pure as Norway. Most importantly, you don’t forget the friends (old and new) you created those memories with and the things they taught you.

It wasn’t just the memories I created on this trip that matter. Being with my college friends again, the memories from long ago were refreshed. My ambitions, my mistakes, my failures, my successes, my goals, my dreams - they make up my memories, memories of where I’ve been, what I’ve done, how I think, who I am.

Pastor David said that active remembering affects words and actions. It is transformative. This is my active remembering of the people, place, and time that encouraged me to stay true to who I am and reminded me that something beautiful must come from Someone beautiful.

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If you can’t tell already, the air and nature here do wonders for your mind and soul. Let me walk you through this incredible place now.

To Yidan, Michelle, and Andrew: thanks for the memories.

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