“Ah! Välkommen!” Hanna squealed as she swept me into the kitchen of her quaint Swedish home. Maja smiled at me as she carefully stirred a steaming pot of noodles, and Ebba waved from her perch atop the counter. It was my last evening in Helsingborg, Sweden, where I had just completed a summer internship. While living in the city, Hanna, Maja, and Ebba had become my closest friends, and we planned to spend my last evening in the country enjoying dinner together on Hanna’s patio.

Soon, our backyard paradise became cloaked in a soft, sunset haze that made every sip of wine sweeter, every laugh more harmonious, and every flower more beautiful. We sat for hours, comparing our respective educational systems, and contrasting our countries’ governmental policies. We marveled at all the ways in which our lives were somehow so different, yet so much the same. I told them tales of nights spent with my brother, running barefoot through the grass, sparklers in hand on the Fourth of July. And they, in turn, recounted days spent dancing in blissful celebrations of the summer solstice. My three companions stared wide-eyed when they discovered that I had never tasted rhubarb pie – a delicacy as essential to the Swedish Midsommer as gingerbread cookies to Christmas. Hanna skipped from her chair to a nearby fence, where she snapped a stalk from a plant that was unfamiliar to me. As Maja carefully pared the rhubarb stalk with her knife, Hanna returned to the table with a dainty china bowl brimming with white crystals. The sugar paired perfectly with the rhubarb, but it wasn’t nearly enough to sweeten the bitter end of that marvelous night, or the end of my surreal summer in Sweden. We reveled in the last minutes of each other’s company as the sun finally sank behind the trees. Ebba clasped the candle flickering in the middle of the rough, wooden table, and used it to light the three that surrounded it. Enveloped in their warm glow, I embraced each of my dear friends one last time.

As I journeyed home that night, I reflected on the beauty of the evening, especially those last, cherished, candlelit moments. I pondered how Ebba lighting the other candles did not diminish the strength of the original candle’s flame. In fact, together, the four lights became collectively stronger. And, I realized, so had we. In all of my travels, my light has grown brighter, not by simply taking knowledge and experiences, but from sharing in them. In doing such, I have learned that it is both our similarities and our differences that make us strong when we unite our flames. Our world is teeming with so many brightly burning candles – there are many wonders waiting to be explored, admired, and shared. I have found joy in seeking out these wonders, and in embracing the journey of life. I feel blessed each day that I am able to participate in our great, collective existence. Although I am but one small part of this existence, I am one part that strives to gratefully contribute. For me, writing and photography are outlets through which I attempt to quantify, express, and share the overwhelming delight and inspiration that I continually feel. This may add only one, short verse to the great novel of our humanity, but I believe that together our stories compose a magnificent, interconnected masterpiece of which I yearn to be a part.