Sunday, May 22, 2016
It feels a bit surreal to think that I will officially be houseless, living out of my RV, and on the road in less than three days. The plan is to spend the summer (more or less) traveling through the western part of the United States in my Winnebago Brave. That’s a 28-foot motorhome with no slide-outs. For two adults and a three year old…
There’s a whirlwind of activity going on right now in preparation. I’m downsizing, organizing, moving, and tying up loose ends, but what’s got most of my attention is this profound sense of peace. I’ve been nurturing it for a while—and it’s still young—but it’s growing. I find it fitting that I’m really feeling its strength here at the dawn of this new, nomadic chapter in my life. It’s a kind of stillness that I welcome in the face of so many uncertainties.
It reminds me that all the answers are within. There is no physical place to seek and no physical place from which to vacate. Travel, just like life itself, is a journey. It isn’t the external pursuit of answers or the filling of a void. Our experiences, wherever we may have them, are reflections of ourselves—or of our minds and the thoughts and judgments they churn out with alarming, unrelenting speed. They can determine how we receive the world.
Traveling won’t help us run away from something or find anything either. Those things can both be accomplished, and often are, in a perfectly stationary manner. I’m at a point in my life where I’m consciously seeking. I’m setting out to fulfill my desires of visiting places I want to see and experience. With this trip, I’m seeking new travel experiences, not necessarily answers. Because all the answers are within—they are held in that stillness. Sometimes we travel great distances to discover this, but it isn’t necessary. I used to marvel at how changed I felt after a trip. Now I realize that it wasn’t the trip at all; it was a spiritual transformation. Travel can initiate or accelerate this process, but it doesn’t constitute the process itself. It’s an inside job.
New and amazing people, places, and things can inspire us. They can provide perspective. But they can’t open our eyes or breathe life into dormant souls. Only we can do that. As I embark on this physical journey through time and space, I know well that I’ll end up in the same place internally. And if I don’t, I will know that the real journey wasn’t the trip at all.
