Closer to My Dreams

  Day 10 está aquí! While the time is certainly flying by, it seems like we’ve been in blissful exploration for months. What was this life prior full of laundry machines, closets and iced coffee? 

We’re finally getting the hang of this lifestyle where our possessions are rollable and squeezable and transportable on our backs (#trapeziusqueen). We’ve started cooking our own meals, hand washing our clothes and even bargaining with locals for free tent-pitched-night’s sleeps behind hostels and hotels. 

Despite the Western luxuries from another life, I have been reminded in just this week and a half the humbling treasures of traveling. 

I am back to being surrounded by the new, the unfamiliar. I am forced to be alert and present. I am living life wide-eyed, soaking in every new word, custom and person.  

  

I think that this awareness is what draws humans to travel again and again. It is the complete immersion into a new world that reminds us how minuscule our personal problems and lives are in the grander scheme. It is the feeling of ego-deflation, the resetting of perspective and the stripped-down rawness of self, eyes wide and arms open, ready to embrace modestly and gratefully all that the world has to offer. 

This presence, awareness and alertness is what I was craving when I last mentioned feeling stuck; the feeling right before the acceleration. I’m starting to figure that people can only stay comfortably “stuck” for so long, lest the fear of change keep them from breaking habit. Perhaps it is different for everyone- once I started to feel that stagnation, I knew my truth was calling me to something more. 

There is no fearlessness without having fears; the courage comes in facing them. 

When I answered my truth’s calling, magical things happened. Not only did I have the courage to face my fears, I had the drive to go out searching for them myself. It was this newfound understanding of my capabilities and my strength that guided me. I wrote in my journal, “I’m feeling so fearless these days; so fully grasping my life by the horns and just living the way I want to live!” 

With that exciting, fulfilling understanding and appreciation about making my life my very own in all the ways I wanted to, I found the power to face down these fears. I found the key to fearlessness (“they don’t want you to live”🔑🔑🔑). I followed my truth and my calling and I dove right in. And I learned there is no fear of death or failure, so long as you’re living your life the way that you love to live it. There is nothing to regret, no “should have, would have, could have” and no unfinished business. 

Because you know that you listened, self-reflected, sought out and tried. You challenged yourself to be the best you, and only you, could be. And with the fulfillment of doing what you love for your truth and purpose comes no greater reward and unlimited possibilities. 

I am diving, head first into this passionate, truthful life of mine. I’m not stopping, giving in, and I’m never turning back. 

  For those of you who can’t decipher the typically my-eyes-only chicken scratch, it reads: “I jumped off the bridge. Who do I think I am! Who is this girl, fearless in her evolution and plight in discovering and striving toward and grasping her truth, smiling all the while?”

It is me. And it has always been me. Just how it is you, and has always been you. 

 

  The Puente San Francisco in Baños, Ecuador- 100 meters high.

For those of you who read this post thinking the truth and presence vernacular was more looney than transparent, I would love to share and reference two life-changing books that helped me understand: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho and A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose by Eckhart Tolle. Happy reading, and happy living. 🙂