find what is sacred.
believe in belief.
be inquisitive.
show gratitude.
You’re beginning to ask bigger questions of yourself and the world you are encountering along the way. Suddenly, you ask of yourself: What do I really want to get out of this journey?
Up until then, you feel that you were merely stumbling around without actually paying attention to making sure that each foot went after the other. Your feet still stumble, but at least you attempt to be more aware of it. You have faith that those feet will keep taking you forward…
I like to call it {abroad} way of thinking…
I left on my own pilgrimage in search of my passion. I wanted to grow as a writer, but also as a person. I wanted to find my story in the telling.
What you say and do, how you communicate, are merely your forms of expressing yourself. Information gets lost, ‘in translation’. It begins taking on new dimensions from the completely unique perceptions each individual applies to some very universal concepts. In other words, everyone has their own definition of the truth and each individual must define it for themselves. It makes the world go round. It’s how things are created, innovated, imagined, and explored. It’s the art of dreaming and the science of doing. It’s understanding that everyone is in search of their own truth, and no two truths will be the same.
Disappearing from the world and into myself, I was able to begin to express where my heart was. I needed long-term solitude free of everyday distractions that were keeping me from knowing where my path should lead me. I realized I couldn’t possibly “know”, but I could always be experiencing.
After walking over 400 kilometers, I felt an amazing sense of accomplishment. However, The feeling was soon followed by an immediate sense of emptiness. A feeling that the journey was somehow over.
After a little over a week interacting with people as little as possible, I was beginning to feel a lot more comfortable in solitude. I was also beginning to see it in my writing, or rather, my confidence to do so. My confidence to create. Not just create writing, but create whatever and whoever I wanted to be, to live life in a new and exciting way. I was finally aware that there were infinite possibilities and if I was open to creating them, I could really begin to change who I was into who I want to be.
I began feeling happier. I felt a sense of newfound clarity breathing in fresh mountain air and carrying everything I owned on my back. Each step brought me closer to my destination, and one foot couldn’t go before the other. It was a practice in meditation on all levels. It was simple. Time didn’t seem to matter and was broken up by eating, writing, thinking, and not thinking. From one village to the next. From morning to night.
“never trust a thought that didn’t come by walking”
-nietzsche
I had a big question looming on my mind as I embarked on the journey. Where is the path taking me next? I was unsure if moving to a city full of vices was really what I was looking for. Wasn’t I supposed to travel the world? Wasn’t I supposed to spend a spontaneously simple life out of a backpack meeting new faces without any schedule or plan? It almost seemed as if I was just throwing the towel in and letting whatever happened… well, happen. Which, don’t get me wrong, isn’t a bad thing. As a matter of fact, It’s how I found myself here in Amsterdam, actually.
There is a big difference between leading your life and letting your life lead you, and I was beginning to see that I was going wrong because of one major problem. I was letting things just “happen” to me instead of actually making things “happen.” The problem was that I didn’t know how to make my life really be what I pictured it to be. I was staring at a blank canvas and hoping the Mona Lisa would just appear. In a perfect world, maybe. But we don’t live in a perfect world and I hope that’s why you’re reading this right now. Because you actually believe you can do something about it.
It’s by taking one step after the other, one stroke of the paintbrush at a time and being open to changing course when you think you were meant to do something else. It’s being open to yourself that will give you the answers and there is simply no possible way you can know what you’re supposed to do except for this very moment that, in this case, you have dedicated to yourself to in this moment, reading this very blog. It’s a choice that you’ve made. Fortunately, I can not tell you how to make any choice in your life.
It’s fortunate that we have that freedom to make those decisions for ourselves, because nobody knows you better than you do. No matter how much people love you, you understand that no one but yourself can possibly know what is best for you and it is important to take that time in solitude to evaluate yourself as an individual free from any job, person, thing, obstacle, or limit.
It’s about taking the time to take care of your garden instead of thinking someone else will take care of it for you, or furthermore, that it will take care of itself.
