14 July 2013

there is stillness in moving


I have spent five wonderful years with a big red box--years of documenting dreams and unadulterated feelings beginning from I was only a superficial teen writing about her inspiring scriptwriting professor and dance rehearsals, to my early years of confusing twenties ricocheting between adolescence and adulthood. By the end of 2012, I wrote a year-end entry where I said that after all the emotional turmoils of the past years, I think I am finally starting to be better. And so with that, I start this new phase for my blog as well where hopefully better stories (and photos!) shall thrive.

I know what I want now. I want to write. I think I have known this all along, but fear and insecurity always took over the best of me. And for a long time, I couldn't do anything. But this is not the case anymore. Sure, I still feel a bit of insecurity sometimes, but I think insecurity can be a good thing if you know how not to delve in it and instead, allow it to make you better. Because as disconcerted twenty-somethings, fear is the only thing paralyzing us from being the people we always wanted to be.

As you may have already noticed, I have been having an extreme case of wanderlust that I can't shut up about. Anyone whom I've ever sat with in the past month would bear witness. And for the longest time of just going-with-the-flow-because-I-don't-really-know-what-to-do-or-what-I-want, I think I'm really starting to come together. After meeting so many backpackers, their sense of adventure and free-spiritedness has eventually rubbed off on me leaving me high and craving some adventure myself. Most of them are people who, like me, believe that there is more to life than a degree, an 8 to 5 job and starting a family. They travel to put a little meaning in their lives, and I want that for myself, too. Some people think that this existentialism pursuit is merely the refusal to grow up and get a "real job", but I think these people who say so are the ones who are afraid. They only take what is given to them and they seek nothing more outside what they know. At one point in their lives, in their younger years most probably, they wondered and toyed with the thought of running, too, but they never went through with it for some practical excuse.

One of those travelers I met has recently reached the end of his adventure and finally went home. And he was surprised with what he saw: an entire house filled with things he doesn't need. "It's funny, living with so little in so long, and then you come home to realize your place is filled with useless crap", he said. He spent the next three days decluttering--boxed half his clothes, shoes and other belongings and donated them. "It's what backpacking does to you." Whatever that is, I want to understand by experiencing it myself. I want to be changed in a way only traveling can change someone.

What I'm saying is, that's the direction I want to go. I want to write, I want to travel, and I want to write about those travels in this blog. You see, you find something in traveling--a certain peace, a stillness. Because for a short period while you're traipsing between airports and seas, you won't be the one watching things come and go. You will be the one moving, while everything else stays still. And how refreshing that is, for a change.

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