Thursday, February 10, 2011

Leave Tomorrow

     Well, I sit here with my coffee writing a list of to-dos this morning. I leave tomorrow for Namibia, and it will take me 3 days to get there. I'm excited, I'm scared and every emotion in between. I have 3 books (Power of One, Brave on The Rocks and Letters to My Son) 3 whole living magazines, made myself a new journal and have plenty of gummy worms and ginger tea for the trip. I'll be gone for just short of one month, and I'll try to keep up with my photo blog while I'm away.
 

This morning I rolled over and grabbed my book from my nightstand and read this, It's inspiring:
      "To be a real traveler you must be willing to give yourself over to the moment and take yourself out of the center of your universe. You must believe totally in the lives of the people and the places where you find yourself, even if it undermines your faith in the life you left behind.
       You need to share with them, participate with them. Sit at their tables, go to their streets. Struggle with their language. Tell them stories of your life and hear the stories of theirs. Watch how they love each other, how they fight each other. See what they value and what they fear. Feel the spaces they keep in their lives.
        Become part of the fabric of their everyday lives and you will get a sense of what it means to live in their world. Give yourself over to them - embrace them rather than judge them - and you will find that the beauty of their lives and their would will become apart of yours ...."

     "...That is why we need to travel. if we don't offer ourselves to the unknown, our senses dull. Our world becomes small and we lose our sense of wonder. Our eyes don't life to the horizon; our ears don't hear the sounds around us. The edge is off our experience, and we pass our days in a routine that is both comfortable and limiting. We wake up one day and find that we have lost our dreams in order to protect our days. Don't let yourself become one of those people."

-Kent Nerburn (author of: Letters to My Son)

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