Entry 931 - Traveling Is a Balancing Act

Entry 931 - September 30th, 2021

(Wrote this while in the midst of traveling all over Europe from August to December)

Traveling is learning to balance the predictability with the unpredictability. It’s learning to balance stability with instability. It’s learning to be okay when things don’t go as planned and, instead of reacting negatively to the unpredictable, learning to embrace it with love and appreciation for the growth it provides.

Some days you might make your train. Other days, you may miss it by a couple of seconds. There might be weeks when you meet amazing friends who become like family and change your life for the better. At the same time, you could meet the most challenging people who have no desire to truly help you but use you relentlessly for their own gain. Whether that’s someone trying to lie to the police about you to get out of paying because they ran out of money, or a person on the street who steals all your valuables.

At the end of the day, you cannot predict every challenge, or else, where would be the fun in the present moment? Part of facing challenges is learning the best way to handle them—the way that is least taxing negatively and most beneficial for you and everyone around you.

There will be moments where you will feel alone, like no one sees you. No one knows you, and you might even wonder who you are on this trip. You might feel so unseen that you could just vanish, and no one would even notice. Even if they did, they wouldn’t care. It makes one feel a deep appreciation for family, friends, and one’s own community. To be seen. To be heard. To be loved. It’s a very special feeling when you don’t feel any of that as you travel from city to city, from destination to destination.

But then you learn that love has always been there. Maybe you aren’t used to experiencing it or seeing it as a foreigner in a foreign land. You retrain yourself to see how you are divinely protected, divinely loved by every interaction, every connection, and every place you travel. Not necessarily from a bodily standpoint, but from your mere existence as an immortal divine soul.

You start to conceptualize and intuitively enter into the realization of how we all willingly play roles. We all willingly choose our lives, where we were born, who we would like to come into contact with, and the types of challenges we would like to experience. Not necessarily because we need to grow, but more so because we love to experience. If everything is perfect with no contrast to imperfection, then how can you truly appreciate the depth of perfection?

I speak of perfection not meaning completion, but always being fulfilled with no true need for anything. Perfection in the sense that your awareness is experiencing a temporary forgetfulness of your true nature as perfection. Perfection as in the state of experiencing, being, and exploring. Because what fun is it if you’ve already finished the journey and have nowhere to go? What fun is it if you’ve already explored everything and now have nothing new to learn, no new challenges to face?

If that is what true perfection is, then it would get boring after a while. Not expanding and just staying in the same spot, same experience, same completion, would eventually create the desire to explore oneself. Once you realize the desire for exploration, challenges, and new realities to inhabit, you start to not only welcome the good but also the bad—knowing it is just as vital and beautiful to experience the contrast to truly appreciate the beauty.