My heart accelerates with the plane. This is the part of flying I love the most. Speeding up until we leave the ground, until we part with the earth, until we pull away from gravity, that one force that has control over us at all times. Interesting to be affected by something every minute of our existence, under its control until we don’t even consider it anymore. When the plane takes off, we hover above and upwards, until anything is possible. I feel free, like I could go anywhere. As long as I have enough fuel, that is. Oh, yes, I want to fly. I want to have my own little plane. Where would I go? More than cities, more than countries, it is the internal landscapes that I want to visit most. Why am I here, for example? It is not this river that I am rising above, it is not the water reflecting the silver sky as it snakes towards the foothills of mountains feeding it with snow. It is not this city, laid out like light blocks, perfectly symmetrical, in straight lines from any angle. It is simply the unexpected rush of emotion when a year old baby boy pulls himself up on my knees so he is tall enough to hug me. It’s the conversation with his mother, feet to feet on the couch, as we peel back the layers through words, and share until we get to that place where we feel understood, and from an internal perspective, I can say: I see you. Yes, I’d fly hours and states away for that connection.
My journeys, I have realized, have nothing to do with the 17 physical countries I have been to. The destinations are external. But what I am really chasing is a feeling, an internal landscape. I am looking for what shows up on the mirror of my soul when I stand, swim or hike through an area. It’s not Cozumel, it is the feeling of being a special guest in the most colorful glowing sea garden imaginable! It’s not Peru, it’s the dizzy feeling, the goosebumps that come when I am standing in a 1200 year old temple dwarfed in the shadow of a condor, on a mountain, surrounded by mountains. It’s not India itself, it is the expanding feeling as my mind opens with the books in the Tibetan Library. Just as the Ganges is not a river there, but at sunrise its the glowing body of a god. And to paddle out on the Ganges is to reunite with, be surrounded by and in the flow of the sacred. It’s not a vacation I am seeking in Hawaii, it is that unique sun-kissed sensation when I am happily exhausted just out of the ocean. The way I can feel the tingle of freckles popping up on my salt-smoothed skin.
Looking at things on an internal landscape, I feel why I am working where people are doing what they love to do. I can feel why I am with a man who holds so much passion and creativity in his heart that is escapes every few seconds and races down his arms, through his fingers and into the touch that tells I am loved. Its more than his face or his shape, some well designed castle, it is who lives there that intrigues me.
Why do we do the activities that we do? I kayak because I love the places that river can take me, I love being openly in the perspective where it may reveal to me its beauty. I dive because I love being reminded that there is a whole other realm, a whole other world and ecosystem under the surface, and to be a part of that, to float weightless, and the feeling it gives me of discovering things I never before knew existed.
I do not travel to go places, if I could ever put that into words to express to you, I travel to be places, to feel places, to again fuel that fire in my heart.
What if we all looked at why we do what we do from the internal landscape? Why do you live where you live? Why do you date who you date? What feeling are you chasing by the work you do? I find more importance in how all these things make me feel, and I suppose that is because I put so much priority in feeling good, in living happily.
What is the feeling you are chasing? Is it a feeling of belonging, of being needed, of being successful? What would it be like if we looked at the internal before we chose the external? If I am looking for a feeling of connection, where would I work, where would I travel, who would I befriend to find that feeling? How could we alter our behavior or our location to align with the internal feeling we are chasing? Would we have a better chance of getting what we want if we first identified with what it felt like and then moved towards what it looks like?
And so I board another plane, returning to the corresponding little notches that fit along the sides of my puzzle piece. Plugging back into the equation I have drawn of my life. Fully conscious that I could at anytime change the piece. And there are a thousand equations I could plug into to make my life work, so many little variables added together may equal the feeling I am chasing. On a physical airplane, flying towards a feeling. From one internal landscape to another, fulfilled and connected.
