When I was in Puerto Rico, I started analyzing whether or not all this travel is just an elaborate and clever way of avoiding my problems. I didn’t really think it was until I was in the cab headed to the airport last Sunday and I said, jokingly, “Bye bye, problems!” Everyone laughed, but you know what they say – every joke is rooted in truth. So I figured maybe I should examine that.
read more ↓I’m not going to deny that these last six months have been both the most rewarding and the most challenging out of all my 31 years on this planet – I’ve written about that more than once. And certainly it helps to get away every once in a while, though my “every once in a while” has turned into “once or twice a month” thanks to some incredible good luck. But something clicked in me during this last trip. I don’t know when it specifically happened, or why, or how, but I decided that having this glorious travel writing opportunity meant I had a new responsibility to myself. Namely, if I was going to have the opportunity to travel this much I had to really grow from it.
Which isn’t to say that I haven’t grown from previous travel opportunities – I certainly have in little ways, but I don’t think it’s been anything too dramatic mainly because I wasn’t ready for that, really. But from the Mexico trip on, I’ve kind of set my intention that each of these trips is going to be something miraculous and wonderful in terms of changing my perspective on life and how I live it (which I won’t go into, because it’s all going in a book that’s turning out pretty spectacularly so far, I must say.) But so far, Mexico started to change my understanding about love. Finland started to change how I relate to people. And Puerto Rico has started me changing how I deal with my issues.
On the past trips I’ve played the whole “running away from home” game in an effort to escape my problems. I feel really good when I’m gone and then I come home and feel overwhelmed again, and it spirals further out of control. But in Puerto Rico I decided that’s the wrong way to do it. What’s the point of learning and growing outside of my comfort zone if I ignore the lessons as soon as I get home? So this time when I got home, I took a look at where I was – which was essentially the same place I was at before I left, albeit with a little bit of a reprieve that I was really grateful for. And I’ve decided that it’s all going to land where it lands and trying to control it or freaking out about things is just going to make it worse, and make me feel worse.
(A sidenote – someone once told me that our pets are actually a window to ourselves. Tonight while I was working, Pasha desperately wanted to sit on my lap and I wouldn’t let her because I can’t type when she does that. So after the umpteenth time of her coming to my lap and picking at my hip and me telling her I’ll come cuddle when I’m done, she vomited on the floor. So, she made herself sick because she couldn’t get what she wanted right when she wanted it. Which isn’t much different from what I’ve been doing, when you think about it. I want a solution to my problems right now, and when I don’t get it, I stress myself out and my skin breaks out. I may not be as overt as spraying my stomach contents on the floor, but there’s definitely correlations between our behaviors.)
Anyway. I can’t change the past, nor do I want to – but obsessing over what’s going wrong and trying to fix it is just another clever way of living in the past. What I need to do is change how I deal with the situation going forward and accept that I’m doing all I can to change my situation… and that’s really all I can do. Stupidly simple, and yet it’s eluded me for a while now. But surprisingly it’s helped me a lot in the last two days that I’ve been home. I’m not obsessing, I’m sleeping well and I’m being super productive – all good things. So only more good things can come from that, right?
Time for bed… I have a big day ahead of me tomorrow…
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