:: Idle Neurosis ::

:: Tuesday, February 18, 2003 ::

i am feeling very apprehensive about spain...as much as i am scared; i am excited...it didnt help this evening though that i received an email from the coordinator in spain with 'updated' living arrangements in madrid and to my demise, one of the changes included randi's relocation. so i will be living alone with Gloria. i don't mind living by myself but its just that i was anticipating encountering all these new experiences with someone by my side, to through them with me; but now i dont. the new living arrangements may be a mistake, i'll find out when i receive responses from the emails i sent out tonight. it just makes travelling a tad more intimidating.

so its times like these when i'm feeling anxious that i dig through my things and find something to calm me down....and this is what turned up:

"Wanderlust, the urge for adventure, the desire to know what is over the next hill, are like echoes in the backs of our minds that speak of sounds not quite heard and places not quite seen.

You should listen to these echoes. Take the chances and follow the voices that call you to distant places. Live, if only for a short time, the life of a traveler. It is a life you will always cherish and never forget.

The magic of travel is that you leave your home secure in your own knowledge and identity, but as you travel, the world in all its richness intervenes. You meet people you could not invent; you see scenes you could not imagine. Your own world, which was so large as to consume your whole life, becomes smaller and smaller until it is only one tiny dot in space and time. Your return a differnt person.

Many people don't want to be travelers. They would rather be tourists, flitting over the surface of other people's lives while never really leaving their own. They try to bring their world with them wherever they go, or try to recreate the world they left. They do not want to risk the security of their own understanding and see how small and limited their experiences really are.

To be a real traveler, you must be willing to give yourself over to the moment and take yourself out of the center of your universe. You must believe totally in the lives of the people and the places where you find yourself; even if it causes you to lose faith in the life you left behind.

Become part of the fabric of their everyday lives. Embrace them rather than judge them, and you will find that the beauty in their lives and their world will become part of yours. When you move on you will have grown. You will realize that the possibilities of life in this world are endless, and that beneath our differences of language and culture we all share the same dream of loving and being loved, of having a life with more joy than sorrow.

Travel, no matter how humble, will etch new elements in your character. You will know the cutting moments of life where fear meets adventure and loneliness meets exhilaration. You will know what it means to push forward when you want to turn back.

And when you have tragedies or great changes in your life, you will understand that there are a thousand, a million ways to live, and that your life will go on to something new and different and every bit as worthy as the life you are leaving behind.

Take the chance as a traveler has to take. In the end you will be so much richer, so much stronger, so much clearer, so much happier, and so much a better person that all the risk and hardship will seem like nothing compared to the knowledge and wisdom you have gained."
~Kent Nerburn

sorry, didnt mean to get too self-help sounding on ya; but its really an incredible piece and quieted my fears for the time being.

I think those times I was probably just drunk.


stellar lady:: Anonymous 8:51 PM [+] ::
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