travel

There Is Only This Moment

08/09/2018 by John 1 Comment

This is not New Zealand. This is the Deschutes River in Oregon.

I was walking down the street on a summer day, with the heat of the sun radiating off the broken concrete street. I noticed the feel of my feet contacting the pavement and the waves of sensation created by that encounter radiating up through my body. I felt each breath of air entering and leaving my nostrils, and noticed that I was noticing these things. For a few minutes, possibly only seconds, I lived in the awareness that there is only this moment. All else past and future was only an illusion.

I had recently returned from a trip to the Pacific Northwest with friends and family. I was in the readjustment period following a nice vacation and the transition back into the routine of home. I was reminiscing about the trip, trying to make it real again when it hit me that it was truly over and could never be experienced again. I felt as if it had never really happened at all.

Of course, it had occurred. I had felt the cold waters of the Deschutes River as I drifted down it on my inflatable sleeping pad. I had kayaked Puget Sound, watching seals poke their heads out from the dark blue-grey waters to have a peek at us awkward skinny armed and big flippered creatures. But I knew that all that had passed. It was no more real any more than adventure I could conjurer in my imagination.

There is no sadness in this, only freedom. There is little value in revisiting the past other than to remember the lessons we learned and appreciate the opportunities we have experienced. It is so easy to become lost in our past, whether it be reliving good times or obsessing over the wrongs we feel have been perpetrated against us or the mistakes we have made. But this is a form of prison. We cannot change what has already occurred, only grow from it and move forward. We are the accumulation of our past experiences but we don’t get to decide which parts to embrace and which to ignore; we must embrace them all.

Realizing that the present is all we have provides us the freedom to do whatever we choose, unshackled by what has occurred before. We do not have to be what we have been. That person no longer exists. Each breath we take, each morsel of food we ingest, each thought we have and action we take changes us. We are never the same person we once were and this is a beautiful thing.

Based on a journal entry from 7.22.14

Anywhere is Everywhere

08/03/2018 by John 5 Comments

From the window of our apartment overlooking the hills and the sea, I can watch the planes take off from the airport and hear the deep rumble of their engines as they gain altitude. In the morning, before the sun has risen, I watch their flashing lights grow smaller and smaller as they climb into the still dark sky. In the evening, I marvel as the late afternoon sun lights them up like comets shooting upward from the earth. Some people would not want to live near an airport, but I find it to be a comfort.

After a month in New Zealand, the novelty is starting to wear off and the weight of the reality of life here is beginning to bear down on me. I am still intoxicated by the beauty of this country, the friendliness of its people, and the more relaxed way of life that seems to be a part of the culture here. But I don’t know anyone, and nobody knows me. I feel so far away from everyone and everything I’ve ever known.

But then I look up again from my loneliness and watch another plane climb into the sky and I know that everything is closer than it seems. All I have to do is walk down the road, pay my fare, and I can be anywhere I want to be. And then I remember that it is even simpler than that. If I close my eyes and listen to my heart, I know that I am never alone and that anywhere is everywhere.

It’s A Job

07/27/2018 by John 2 Comments

This week, I started working at an all plant-based Mexican restaurant. Not exactly a dream come true, but it’s a job, and I get paid. I get to move around, interact with people, make delicious food, and get out of the house. It will be fine for now. Who knows, I might actually come to love it.

It’s part of the lifestyle. I’m living in New Zealand. I have to remind myself of that sometimes since it still seems somewhat unreal. Having this job right now is just a small piece of the bigger picture. It helps enable me to be here, living in this wonderful, vibrant city where I can run in the hills and by the sea. It’s a job with flexible hours, even flexible seasons that match the times when I might want to go away so as a lifestyle piece, this might work out just fine.

I need to get back to knowing that a job doesn’t define who I am. It is a means to an end. I don’t need to love my job, as long as it serves me and I don’t serve it. When it starts to feel the other way around, that’s when there is a problem.

Mostly, I am happy to have something to do. Someplace to go. A purpose to my day. It has been so long it seems. I have not worked a day since April. Crazy.

It’s hard going through life without a sense of purpose. But maybe it’s a less complex idea than that. It’s hard to go through life without a place to be, or any responsibilities to anybody other than yourself. You just wake up in the morning and don’t know what to do.

Hard. That’s probably the wrong term for this, isn’t it? Hard would be not being able to work and wanting to. Hard is not being able to feed your family. My life has never been hard.

We’ve been in Wellington for three weeks and we’ve stayed in three different places now. There is a view out over the hills here and we have a little more room to spread out. Still, we will pack our bags one more time before we get into a more permanent lodging situation. We are like a stone skipping across the water. Slowly we are getting closer and closer to coming to a stop and sinking down to rest. Hopefully, we will like where we land.