On the Road Again?

My heart is on the open road. It is in planes, trains and automobiles. It is in moving forward, seeing the beautiful things, touching history and imagining a future. It is in going places. I used to want to be an anthropologist. I used to want to travel the world and do documentary ethnographic research. Whatever that meant. It seemed cool to do. Somehow life got in the way of living. Fear set in, more immediate goals arose.

Last year I went abroad. It was a long time coming. It was fabulous. I don’t know how to describe it. Its like your soul, just opening up… I get the itch to go often, but I deny myself that urge. But every year, come spring, I’m ready to plan the summer with a vengance. I cannot pretend anymore that it is not exactly what I need.

So. I’m trying to decide. Should I travel this summer? When a lot of people answer these questions, they think of the hows. How will I fund it, how will I find the time? But I know for me, once I say yes, once I affirm it and accept it, the hows fall into place.

Right now it seems really foolish. I just got this new apartment and I don’t know where I will work in the fall. Financially it could be a big setback, or it might not make a dent.

One thing about me, I want to know all the rules, all the exceptions, and all the odds of winning or losing before I get in the game. I want to know how the movie ends before I watch it. But certainty doesn’t come and neither does forever. In the past 2 years, I’ve seen young people drop dead without warning. I’ve seen old people get to the end of their lives only to admit that they didn’t live it the way they wanted to. I’ve seen people scared to dream a new dream. Its dawning on me that life is not promised and time is not promised. It seems like, if I can do it, I must do it. If adventures seem difficult now, how hard will they be when I have a mortgage and a family.

But my grandmother is getting sick also…. Who know’s how long she has…. Its hard to plan for the future when there are so many variables out of your control…..

Just Do It

How many journeys have ended after the first step? Have you ever decided to take a fateful plunge, and then stepped back at the last moment? Have you ever tried to take a giant leap got right off the ground, and fell a foot from where you landed, because your fear made you fall down? Have you ever tried to take a step in one direction, only to get deterred because there were 3 other directions that looked equally appealing? (In the end you ended up not taking any of the steps anyway... 


I am a planner. I am an in case of emergency, in case I hit the lottery type planner. I plan for all occassions. I overplan, I replan, I will plan for you. But in this season in my life, I'm hearing a voice say, just do it. What lies before us and what lies between us are a lot less powerful than what lies within us. Just jump. Just go. 

Untitled

I never thought of myself as a builder. I try to follow maps or blueprints, they always lead me astray. Patterns never seem to make sense to me, and my sense of symmetry always leaves things lopsided. But I've been building for a long time now. Piecing together a family from two dysfunctional places, putting together a sense of friendship from people near and far, pasting together a vision of a future that leaves the world better for children but still has time for my own goals and building an identity from separate parts. 


Just recently, I resolved to make a mosaic from these broken pieces. To let them come together to make light. It is a noble goal, but sometimes, not so easy. 

They want me for my kidneys...

Direct your eye right inward, and you'll find a thousand regions in your mind yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be expert in home-cosmography"  -Henry David Thoreau


Tonight I went to a lecture about mindfulness and meditation.  They talked about how depression is about ruminating over the past, and anxiety about obsession over the future. But the present is a more neutral space, a space of peace and power. If we will only get into it, and try to stay there, for awhile. Being focused in the present is hard for me. I struggle with flashbacks of past terrors and failures, and I am obsessed with the possibility of their reoccurence in the future, or of new dramas and traumas in the future. So mindfulness is something that I would have once laughed at. However, for the past few years I have been practicing it on and off, becoming a sort of spiritual hipster, reading the secret, buying rosaries, burning candles and contemplating 2012. So I have stepped up my meditation game. 


At this workshop we did a guided meditation. We focused first on giving support, love and care to someone that we care about. So we would just picture them and say nice things to them (I wish you happiness, safety, fulfillment, prosperity, ect.). This wasn't so bad for me. Once I picked a person, and determined this was a friend worthy of my attention, I found it relatively easy to wish nice thoughts upon my friend. I even thought of several friends I'd like to send positive vibrations to. Then we had to picture them saying nice things to us. This part made me deeply uncomfortable. The idea of receiving care is sort of foreign to me. I am deeply distrustful of people, and generally anticipate that they will do something dangerous, manipulative or otherwise cruel to others in general, me in particular. This manifested itself on my recent trip to Europe as me reassuring my tour guide that "you never know who might try to cut out your kidneys and sell them". He would always laugh at me, and I would laugh at him for being naive. Everyone has the possibility to turn. 


But will they? In my meditative thought, I realized that, even though I had trouble hearing the positive thoughts of my friends, they would willingly give this positive feedback. And, even given the opportunity, they wouldn't hurt me. So now I have to work on mindfulness turned inward... and realize that just as I can cultivate lovingkindness towards others by thinking positive thoughts about them, there are others that are already cultivating positive thoughts toward me, not thoughts to hurt me or betray me... This is going to be a challenge.... Because they might not want me for my kidneys, but they might want me for my heart. 

Traveling...

Today marks 1 week until my "world tour" of London, Paris and Rome. I don't know how I feel. I feel that intense level of excitement that you feel when you know that something big is about to happen, something real, something unstoppable. It is a solemn excitement, it isn't giddy or childlike--- this is real, and its scary, its serious business. But it is going to be big fun. BIG. 


I'm not really sure how I feel. The long plane ride scares me the most. I don't like being confined, thats why I'm traveling! I feel so excited. So privileged. I'm thinking of Bessie Coleman and Charlotta Bass and Zora Neale Hurston and all those black women that dared to be bold and be different and be daring and just be themselves. I feel like I'm #winning. Like its a one up on society, where you are trained to delay all of your pleasures and fun until you "retire" or are "rich". Here I am, relatively broke, but living the fabulous life. In a struggling economy, living a dream. I want to pinch myself! 


I've achieved a lot in my 22 years. not much of it seemed like a challenge. this, though, is a challenge. for me to push myself and also to relax, for me to go away from everything I know, and be closer to myself,and just to LEAP, into the ocean of the world. So scary. So exciting. So daring. So bold. So not me. 


But I have to go. I felt like I'd be betraying the side of me that is adventurous, to only learn about the world through magazines and movies and not go out of fear. Plus, the most fabulous people I know have done it, like my best friend Elizabeth, who is in Malaysia. I need to get on her level. 


I can't wait to share all of this with you, through pictures, words and sounds... wish me luck! 

Family

There is a practical question I have been wrestling with, a question that has become philosophical. It is, what is the purpose of family? Maybe you can help me answer. 


In the dictionary, a family is comprised of people connected by blood or marriage. This means that "family" is based on voluntary and involuntary associations. Choices you control and some you don't. However, the second definition of family is one I like more, because it speaks to voluntary association. This one says that your family member is someone who you treat with special loyalty or intimacy. And thus brings my problem and my solution to the family question. 


All of my family members are related by blood or marriage. But lately it is becoming more clear that they are not my "family". They do not treat me with any special loyalty or intimacy. They do not appear to care for me any more than the average person, any more than the acquaintance, the coworker, ect. Our relationships are casual, informal, and flimsy. Place any pressure and they will break, suggesting there was no real bond in the first place. I only see them at holidays, if that. When I do see them, our conversations are shallow. Our commitments are weak and fleeting. And during my most important moments, they are usually not there. If they have important moments, they don't share them with me. 


So what then, is their purpose? Why call them family at all? Maybe they are not my family. Maybe I have no family at all, since I don't have a bond of special loyalty or intimacy with  nearly any of my relatives by blood or marriage.... Maybe when I realize that the tie of blood is a fake one, I can continue to make real ties with people worthy of the effort, and build my family out of friends, who delight in my company, share in my success, and are committed to growing, loving and working together. 

Who Were You?

Who were you before you let fear set in?


What were your dreams before you knew they were dreams? What were your highest hopes? 


Who were you before the world repackaged you?


I am remembering who I was, and it is radically difficult than who I am now....