Says everyone to me…

 “You’re going where?  Oh, it’s like Eat. Pray. Love!  You’re searching for yourself!  Your spiritual pilgrimage! I love it.”

So I bought the shirt this year….  “Not all who travel are lost.”  That’s my retort. That and, you know, naming this blog post after the movie I am accused of living and reliving.  Beating someone with a feather never hurt, but you get the idea.

I am heading to Ecuador on Thursday morning, and it’s Tuesday. So what’s that…  two days? 

I will head out on another trip to a place I have never been, with a group of people from all over the world that I’ve never met, and go places I haven’t researched or picked necessarily.  It’s absolutely delicious. 

I will be hiking volcanoes and taking mud baths and visiting small mountain towns and going to markets and maybe getting sick from trying food I shouldn’t eat.  I might swim in waterfalls or take a sacred bath or watch a young group of children play in the jungle.

I won’t have much luggage.  I might forget something I can’t buy at the market.  I might not bring the right clothes.  Last year I packed for a cold trek in Nepal and it ended up being super hot.  Yes, I know how to use Google.  It was wrong.  I wasn’t the only one.  But I had to make it work, buy what was available, and love the process.

I go never knowing what will inspire me, what lesson I will learn, what challenges I will face.  And it is the most glorious gift to be able to live this dream. 

I come home a different person, each time, for a different reason.  I set an intention.  I leave something behind.  I focus on the moment because nothing from my life is available to me in this environment.  It is a purge of all things I know, all things comfortable and a sudden shift that allows me to see myself differently.  To love myself.  To love differences and change and living without so many things I realize I don’t miss.  Don’t think I come home and get rid of everything!  I don’t.  I love all my things more!  I see the colors in my life more vividly.  I laugh at more irony because I see how silly life is, how serious, and how we can confuse the two!  I miss my friends and my children so badly.

I feel wiser and dumber all at once.  The more you know, the less you realize you know. It isn’t just a quote.

But with great gratitude to my life here!  May you continue richly!  And to the journey ahead, to all of us, whether in Hawaii or Spain or India or Phoenix, it is all really the same.  Each day is a journey, an adventure, a challenge. 

To you, to me, to the journey!

Martini Meditations

CC