I hopped on a plane for Europe knowing what I was passionate about and determined to find a way to make the terms on which I wanted to live my life and the the things I truly cared about work together. I ended up in Rotterdam, Netherlands a few months ago, where I first heard of Knowmads through a friend I’d made with my couchsurfing host. After putting down more and more of myself on paper, I knew it was time to take those thoughts moving. It had been almost four years since I’d been back to Spain, a year of enormous self-growth studying and living with a Spanish family in the south. A month later, I left Rotterdam to complete the Camino de Santiago, an over 300 kilometer walk through northern Spain.
I soon began to understand what Nietzsche meant when he said “Never trust a thought that didn’t come by walking.”In solitary conditions high above the Asturian countrysides, I breathed fresh air and developed some really fresh ideas and a better perspective on my life. As I climbed up a mountain, I would soon climb back down it’s peak into a valley coming closer and closer to untangling who exactly I was and where I was headed. It was a long, sometimes arduous process, but the mini cycle of life, death, and rebirth that it provided has left me a changed man. Changed, for the better, but also changed to continually change.
I have just returned this week from Spain to Rotterdam, a place that, like Spain, has embraced me in immense self-growth. I take a long evening stroll to the other side of the city. I walk past the local art school and read a quote written in neon across the building. It reads “I have to change, to stay the same.” I remember it from my many previous strolls through the city. As I cross the large red Willemsbrug, I look out over the city lights up to the crescent moon draped over a distant ivory bridge. I think about the quote and the diverse development of this peculiar port city. I then remember why I fell in love with her. She understands what it’s like to have many changing faces, but always the same soul; a pure and gritty heart of a city that embraces movement in its people, places, and ideas.
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