KENT, Conn.—Sixteen might seem a tender age to turn a reflective eye on your life experience, but that is exactly what Sacha Reyes, a senior at Kent School, has done.
During his summer break from school, Reyes traveled with his family from Connecticut to Manila, from Manila to Bangkok, and back again—25,000 miles in one month. Along the way, the family stopped to visit their former home in Los Angeles, where the youth began to ponder the importance of experience.
“Heading back home, I feel like I’m leaving behind a version of me that sought spectacle but forgot to see the world around him, always looking for bigger views, bigger landmarks, bigger memories,” he reflected. “None of these places changed; but I did. This trip showed me something between destinations.”
He said that the journey, undertaken to visit his family’s native Philippines, became a cathartic experience, capturing moments of nostalgia, cultural contrast and wonder. “It was a real, lived narrative that I uncovered in pieces as I kept moving between destinations,” he said. “I learned about who I am between these stops, and I returned home with more than I could have ever asked for.”
He has translated his musings into “Puddles,” a polished little video that explores his feelings about revisiting his former home in Southern California, the new wonders he observed in Southeast Asia and his return to the forested hillsides of Connecticut.
His interest in film began with a single course in California that has been amplified since his removal to Connecticut.
“I am a liberal arts sort,” he said, “At heart, I am a storyteller, and film was something I wanted to do. Over time, I started to make my own films, and it was becoming more than a hobby. Moving to Connecticut, it moved way past a hobby to a possible career path.”
Both sides of his family are Filippino and his grandparents lived with them in California before returning to the Philippines five or six years ago. His roots have been “a major influencer” in his life, he said, but he had never been to their native land.
“It was my first time in Asia, my first glimpse of a third-world country,” he said. He was immediately nonplussed as the family pulled away from the airport. “I was looking through a windshield at six lanes of traffic that just merged together with no lines on the road and this little boy—maybe six years old—was kicking a soccer ball through the traffic.”
Coming from a society where a child that young wouldn’t be allowed outside unchaperoned, let alone left to play in traffic, he was shocked. “I couldn’t even speak,” he said. “I was just seeing a different lifestyle. It made me step back and appreciate my life There were power lines everywhere, hanging all over the roads. The light bulbs were flickering—it was so messy. There were shacks on the sides of the roads that were people’s places to live. It was things like that.
“Now, I am sitting here, looking at a clean street, and there is no little boy kicking a soccer ball down it. Life is so different, and it is all hitting me at once. I look out the windows, and it is not the same at all. We live in such a polished place.”
The family moved on from the Philippines to Thailand, where Reyes’ sister played in a hockey tournament. “Thailand was much the same, but I would call it a second-world country,” he said. “There is a better quality of life there.”
Even the family’s passage through Southern California on its way to Asia offered him cause for reflection. “There is something so satisfying about looking back, like tying up loose ends, but the things around you are always the easiest to take for granted. It is so easy to stop seeing what’s in front of you,” he said.
Southern California is a far cry from his home today. After his grandparents went back to the Philippines, his parents decided that they would pull up their California roots and move to Connecticut, in itself a huge cultural shift for the boy.
In Connecticut, he also encountered prep school life for the first time.
“I found out about prep schools while I was playing soccer in California,” he related. “They had a prep school fair. At the time, boarding schools seemed to me like places where parents sent you away and it seemed to me that my parents would never send me away. But here I was, volunteering to go away. I am really happy where I ended up—it’s another aspect of moving to the East Coast.”
Settled amidst the lush greenery of Connecticut, with its abundant rainfall, the family left behind the browns and tans of Southern California. And the youth found a different tempo amidst the somewhat staid Connecticut landscape. “Connecticut, in general, has been like an exhale,” he said. “There is a peaceful forest around my house. It’s a perfect sort of flip-flop that supports my mental health.”
Indeed, Reyes begins his travelogue/philosophical reflection with images of a driving Connecticut rainstorm and a wet landscape, setting a theme for a video accented by a rain motif.
“I highlighted many scenes at Kent School, and I believe that I really captured the beauty and excitement of some of my experiences here: the four seasons, the vibrant, alive culture within a seemingly quaint town, and the various Kent School traditions that have found a permanent place in my heart,” he said.
But more than that, the video “weaves together landmarks, bustling street life and quiet moments from around the world,” that heightened his awareness of the tapestry of life and made him hungry for more, even if future discoveries are internal, the “overlooked moments where wonders still hide.”
He referred to a volcanic lake he had dreamt of visiting that, when he got there, was obscured by rain and clouds. “If this trip taught me anything, a little rain never hurt anyone,” he said. “The puddles are all the same, so why waste this one. Home isn’t boring at all, it’s everywhere. Living isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass; it’s about learning to dance in the rain.”
