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Farmers And Sailors Revisited

03/17/2018 by John Leave a Comment

What Do I Really Want?

Is it really to be a “digital nomad,” letting the wind take me to some remote corner of the world where I’ll sit in a café and work from my laptop? Or would I rather put down roots somewhere close to friends and family? The problem is I still want both.

While owning a house and living in Asheville, I thought I wanted a life on the road, one full of new places and new experiences, but now that I’ve got it, I wonder what it would feel like to settle down someplace once again? There is a part of me that treasures the routines of being in one place and having a more consistent schedule. For example, I want to run another 100-mile race, but I have not been able to develop the discipline required to train for one while moving around so much.

It’s the Farmer’s And Sailors showdown surfacing once again. Though I love the life that I have been living over the past three years, never remaining in any one place for longer than 5 months at a time, it wears on me. Just when I start to know a place, it’s time to pack our bags and move on.

I know that happiness is not a place on a map. It is instead a quality of mind that must be cultivated. Life is precious and short and so I want to be intentional about how I spend my days. How can I be a farmer and a sailor at the same time, having my routines, a community, adventure, and discovery no matter where I am or what I am doing? How can I plant my garden on a moving vessel?

Based on a journal entry from 2.12.15

Accepting All of It

03/09/2018 by John Leave a Comment

I was running up Greybeard Mountain when I reached a state of total acceptance. I accepted the pain and fatigue in my legs along with the beauty of the snow and ice-covered trail. I accepted the thoughts that questioned why I was doing this and the lessons of humility and perseverance that running teaches me. I accepted the difficult conditions of the day: the steepness of the trail, the slippery surfaces that caused each footfall to slide a little bit backward, and the growing fatigue in my body as I neared the top of my second ascent of the mountain. To try and fight these things would be futile. Acceptance was the only answer.

With acceptance comes gratitude. I was filled with a sense of gratitude towards the mountain that had stood there for eons and would remain there long after I have left this world. It had no malice towards me, merely indifference. It was not there to be conquered, only experienced, accepted as it was.

Acceptance is not easy. Sometimes it takes moments of physical or emotional stress to force us to let down our guard and reach that state where we can fully experience all that is happening around and inside us and to just say yes to all of it.

We spend so much of our time battling the things we find difficult or unpleasant, trying with all our might to push them away, to pretend that they don’t exist. But those dark spaces remain in our periphery, tainting everything else we see until we come to the point of accepting them. We have trouble accepting even the good things in life. We wish that they were somehow better or that there were more of them instead of accepting and being grateful for what already is. In the end, we waste our time either pushing things away or pulling things towards us instead of merely accepting what is already right in front of us.

A funny thing happens when we allow ourselves to accept everything: we get a glimpse of completeness. At last, after feeling so torn and tattered we can feel whole again. If we could just accept everything as it is, how differently would we view our lives?

Based on a journal entry from 2.23.15

Follow Your Curiosity

03/03/2018 by John Leave a Comment

I watched a talk by Elizabeth Gilbert called Flight of The Hummingbird: The Curiosity Driven Life. Ms. Gilbert was in the habit of giving people the advice to “follow your passion”. A Facebook comment had made her realize that unlike her, not everyone has an all-consuming passion, something they would do no matter what. When people without that drive hear the advice to “follow your passion”, it makes them feel deficient in some way. I am one of those people.

So much that I read or listen to says the same thing, to follow my passion, to pour all my energy into that thing that I feel most strongly about. But after years of trying to decipher what it is that I am passionate about, no one thing ever seems to rise to the surface for very long at a time. This has been an ongoing source of frustration for me for most of my adult life.

In her talk, Ms. Gilbert goes on to identify people like myself as hummingbirds. We flitter around from one thing to the next and in so doing, cross-pollinate things, bringing ideas to new places and people. It was comforting to watch the talk and have someone acknowledge that not everyone has an overriding passion that makes clear to them the direction their life should follow. Her advice for people like me is to let curiosity be our guide.

It is good to be a hummingbird. Sometimes following my curiosity leads to a dead end, and sometimes to something that shapes the direction of my life for years to come. Curiosity led me to try skateboarding, which introduced me to fascinating people, exciting music, and different ways of thinking about my life. It was curiosity that brought me back to Outward Bound after my course to see what it was like for the people who work here, and 20 years later, I’m still exploring where that pathway leads. Curiosity led to getting a degree in Web Technologies and though I’m still not certain what role it will ultimately play in my life, I liked learning something new. I am a curious ultra-runner, not super passionate about it, but curious enough to really enjoy it. The list could go on for a while.

My curiosity has not lead to fame, riches, or a lucrative career, but it has taken me on a fascinating journey, one that I could have never imagined before embarking upon it. I’ve lived in the Caribbean, hiked and biked in New Zealand, managed a restaurant, cooked for pilgrims walking across Spain, and so many other things. Curiosity is at the heart of what keeps me on the road, moving forward into a future that is unknown, but more interesting because of it’s uncertainty. When you don’t know what’s beyond the horizon, the possibilities are infinite.

I envy those who have a passion, but I don’t think I want to trade places with them. I have no idea what I’ll be doing even six months from now, and that uncertainty keeps me awake and alive, ever scanning my field of vision for what’s next, ever moving across the landscape of this life, occasionally getting stuck in some valleys, but eventually always finding the next mountaintop. Life is sweet, but I think even sweeter when I drink its nectar like a hummingbird.

If you liked this post, you may be interested in I Am a Multipotentialate

Based on a journal entry from 2.23.16