Thursday, July 16, 2009

on love and the end of the open road

My eyes are getting heavy.

It is 3:26, and not in the afternoon, and it seems as though all my waking thoughts and dreams are of travel and what I have learned and am learning. I have been sedentary for only five days, and the open road is already teasing me with sunsets and mile marker signs glowing brightly in my mind.

I have loved this last month. It has moved me and made me dance, and sometimes it has made me question everything. Not just question everything. But Everything, with a capital ‘E.’ In fact, just for dramatic emphasis, you can capitalize the rest of the word as well. EVERYTHING. Because I feel that the weight of this statement is still vastly misunderstood, I will also ask that you add an exclamation point at the end. EVERYTHING!

It becomes easy to question everything (capitalized-with-an-added-exclamation) when you begin to realize that really you know nothing. Despite our best efforts; despite how full of fervor some of our conversations or debates have been; despite how we often feel that our way of living is the way it should be… we don’t know everything, and we haven’t even scratched the surface. You think you have been open-minded? Yeah, I did too.

No matter how often we volunteer our time or money, regardless of how we may be studying to make a difference in this world, despite how we avoid Starbucks to make sure farmers get a Fair Trade price for what they grow, and even though we insist that we are NOT the center of the universe…. we still struggle with looking beyond ourselves and just LOVING. No agenda, no conditions, just love.

I write this now as if I have learned the secret to life, but the truth actually lies in some split-second a week from now when I will be the one honking at the car in front of me for not moving the instant that red turns to green. It becomes evident in the way that we judge strangers instead of hugging them, assuming that what the world sees as beauty, is in fact beauty. It is in every day, when we forget that other people exist and need us to notice that they exist. In the midst of trying to find love, we forget that others are looking as well.

In everything that I have been questioning, this has turned into my new mission in life.

I don’t give a damn whether I have a degree, pay all my bills, am dating anyone, travel the world over… if I have not loved and lived well, none of it will matter in the long run. So for the first time in a very long time, my mission is only to love. Wherever I’m living, whatever I’m doing… Love.

I have no doubt that I will spend a long time figuring out exactly what that means.

And that’s okay.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"All you need is love" is one of the greatest lines of music ever written. It's so profound beyond words that you can only live it to understand it. Love is eternal. It's the purest form of energy ever felt. When you try to feel that in every action you take in life, nothing can ever go wrong.

You have to create the love. Nothing can give it to you. It's within yourself at all times. In order for me to do what I said and feel it in every action I do, I try to make every situation in life worth loving.

Question everything and then question the existence of something at all. Question that act of you questioning it and question whether or not the answer you seek would help you understand anything at all. Question if there is anything to question at all and question whether a question has to have an answer.

In the end the answer is right there. And the words are only understood when the answer is understood. In the end there is nothing but laughter and joy. Behind all the questions you seek, it seeks for you to run out of questions. When you're dumbfounded in silence, it smacks you in the face.

Sometimes it smacks harder. Like when you're stuck behind someone that wouldn't accelerate fast enough for you. Just laugh about it. Create your own love.

It takes lifetimes to scratch just the surface. The surface is so relative it's unreal to think how much further we have to go. Once you catch a glimpse, you're up for the challenge though.

Ready for New Zealand? My bag is packed.