Are you living or are you alive?
I have always had an insatiable curiosity about the world. Eyes wide open, wanting to observe, to understand, to appreciate every person, every creation that I encounter. I have always had questions – lots of them 😅 – and it’s what makes strangers feel welcome in my presence; I genuinely want to know what wisdom they have to share with me.
Sometimes I wonder if people mistake me for being smart simply because I am paying attention.
My mind needs to make sense of things, and so I ask specific questions to close the information gaps, or confirm the connections being made by my mind.
The sun cast its tangerine au revoir over the leopard as she dug into her grass-fed, locally ranched impala steak. We watched, captivated and captive, from a viewing room paned with dark windows. She could not see us, but she knew we were there.
"Are you a biologist?" The conservationist asked me, breaking the silence. "You ask very good questions."
"No," I laughed. "Just curious."
"Then you are intelligent, like the leopard," he surmised.
As with every quality, my curiosity has its light side and its shadow side. At a certain point my mind settles into its surroundings, becomes more "intelligent" and less curious, feels that it has understood “enough,” and then becomes restless. I’m never quite satisfied exactly where I am, because my insatiable curiosity gets the best of me. I know that “out there” there is more to be discovered and understood.
But constantly flinging myself into the new isn’t satisfactory either. Eventually, there is so much new that it starts to resemble the old. Everything reminds me of something I've already seen, so I stop appreciating what's right in front of me. And beneath it all is a quiet longing for a place to rest. A place to call home.
It is not that searching for new hasn't sated me, it is that I have tricked myself into believing that there is no more new to be seen.
It's like this: there's a coffee shop that you pass by each morning. You know what it looks like. You could write a description down right now. Write a description down right now. Tomorrow, when you pass by that coffee shop, look for the things you wrote down and check them off with smug satisfaction. Now look for one thing that you didn't write down. Now another. Now another. Now...
The curious and intelligent mind I have come to love so dearly in this lifetime is fallible. It notices what it wants – what does it want? – and it does not see everything that is there.
"LOOK!" My guide Kennedy pointed wildly into the distance.
"Rhino?" I asked eagerly, fumbling my binoculars.
Then he squinted, and shook his head. "My mind likes to see things that aren't there in the park."
I snorted. "My mind likes to see things that aren't there in relationships."
This realization led me to question everything I have come to know to be true. Beginning with this "longing for home." Two years ago, the routine of "home" murdered my curiosity when I wasn't paying attention, so why exactly am I longing for a place to call home? What is it exactly that I am longing for?
Humans long for stability but the very nature of the world we live in is chaos.
We live in a world where war, climate change, job instability, family dynamics, and politics can force us at any moment to abandon the places we once called home. If the physical place can change at any moment, what exactly is "home?"
What if the only constant of “home” is not a place, but a feeling? What if the whole point of the journey – the Big Journey we call "life," and the little journeys like this one that we take along the way – is to come home to yourself?
By embarking on this grand adventure and loosening my grip on The Things About Which I Am Certain – by becoming more curious and less intelligent – I've started to actually feel more me, more at home, and more gratitude for the miracle of my aliveness.
Introducing: Adventure to Awaken
Adventure to Awaken is a practice in feeling at home wherever I am. A moment to breathe, to witness, to express gratitude, in every writing, in every place. To feel – by cultivating presence with myself – present for the experience of life. I hope that by sharing these reflections with you, you too will come to feel at home, wherever you are, whatever changes you are navigating in your own life. Because when you feel at home – which I have come to understand as a feeling of peace and safety within yourself – then your life begins to shift from living – from just getting by – to a place of aliveness.
Perhaps there is no point to the journey at all. Perhaps there is only the experience of being alive.
Years ago I started a documentary production company called Humanity Is, with the mission of creating stories that get to the heart of what humanity is. This publication is an extension of that mission, made personal. I’m turning the lens on myself, so to speak, to share through my story and experiences in the world how I awakened to my own aliveness, so that you can awaken to yours, too.
Adventure to Awaken is a place to explore what it means to be alive.
Not One, But Two Newsletters
The Adventure to Awaken newsletter is a record of how I am transforming my life through solo travel. Each week I offer reflections and lessons I am learning through the experiences I am having around the world. This newsletter is free.
100 Dollars A Day is a twice-a-month companion newsletter to Adventure to Awaken. If you feel called to embark on your own transformative journey around the world – or heck, if you just like to travel and want some insider advice – I will teach you how to travel on 100 dollars a day, the budget I lived within for 15 months, while still experiencing each destination to the fullest: from safaris, to hiking Kilimanjaro, to sunrise hot air balloons. This newsletter is paid, but in reality, it pays for itself, if you follow the guidance contained within.
Sign up to receive the newsletters, and view more details about the free and paid membership options here.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you for being here. I can’t wait to share more of this journey with you. And I hope to see you in the comments! I’m curious to know what interests you, what questions you have, and what you’d like to hear more about.
