“Try to remind myself that I was happy here before I knew that I could get on a plane and fly away from the road where the cars never stop going through the night to a life where I can watch the sunset and take my time, take all our time…” Sand in my shoes, Dido
How many times in your life have you ever stopped and realised if you’re doing what you really want or if you are the person you want to be? Well, being somewhat of a misfit I wonder about that all the time and I repeatedly ask myself a serious amount of questions on that subject during the day ever since I can remember.
The first part of my life I was truly concerned about fitting in and being the person everybody expected me to be. I was an excellent student: teacher’s loved me, my mom was proud of me and I recall doing everything I could in order to keep my friends happy… Denying who I really was and following the rules worked out for me for a while but a period of several changes came into my life and most of them caught me so off guard that I honestly didn’t know how to react to them. I hated change for a long time and got reluctant towards it without realising that it was actually good for me; change has taught me that I don’t need to fit and be loved by everyone and that everything I do doesn’t need to be approved by everyone around me and I actually feel relieved for not having that weight on my shoulders anymore, and it’s that relief what has given me the chance to try new things.
One of the things that I experimented lately was travelling on my own. I’ve done that several times for work but I had never taken a vacation by myself… People were actually surprised and a little skeptical about it but I was sure it was going to be awesome.
…And awesome it was, I had the time of my life and 10 days away totally changed the way I see things now. I know it might sound stupid but changing your routine for a few days and being away talking to people and learning about their lives can totally make you evaluate if you are happy or not. Some of the people I met sold everything they had to make their dreams come true and literally travel around the world with that money.
I must confess that idea has crossed my mind several times during my life but I’d never actually met somebody who had the guts to do it. It was great realising that the difference between a judgmental person and a happy one is that the first one only caresses their dreams and reject them because they’re afraid of change while the second one not only caresses their dreams but does everything they need to make them come true. I think people are judgmental due to different reasons: they may not know how to carry out their dreams; they just don’t feel confident enough to know that they deserve trying to make them happen and doing as they please, or they’re just afraid of losing what they have come to know as “stability”…
Now that I come to think about it, “stability” was one of the things I was a little bit afraid of losing (even while I was on vacation): at first I tried to book a tour which included accommodation and visiting many of the spots I wanted to visit. After browsing for options on the web, I narrowed it down to this little hotel in San Cristobal, Chiapas which offered a private room and different tours. I was ready to book that hotel for 6 days, 5 nights but their customer service for booking was terrible and I decided I couldn’t trust these people with my credit card info. I was thinking about what to do when a friend of mine suggested: “why don’t you do some backpacking and stay at a hostel?” at the beginning I must confess, I was nervous because I’d never done that before and it involved moving from one place to another by myself and looking for new accommodation at each one of these places instead of just staying at one same place and coming back from the spots I visited to the same location. I even tried to book hostels in advance and even made an excel sheet with all the spots I wanted to visit, some travelling recommendations and 3 different options of hostels for each place in case I couldn’t find somewhere to sleep…
But it wasn’t necessary, the first thing I did when I got to the first stop was forgetting about my stupid pseudo itinerary and just go with the flow. The first couple of days I met backpackers who had been travelling for months and all I could wonder was “don’t they miss their bed?” and “how “stable” their lives have been during their last months???” I couldn’t help noticing how light they were travelling, both emotionally and luggage wise, most of them were carrying only one bag and occasionally sent home stuff they’d bought in order to keep it light. I couldn’t imagine myself travelling that light and wearing the same clothes for an extended period of time ‘til I could find a laundry or a hostel equipped with a washing machine.
I was being a little judgmental myself but as the days went by I realised that most of the things in my bag I didn’t even use, I didn’t need all that stuff: all that make up and all those shoes… I ran out of clean t-shirts pretty soon due to a miscalculation but other than that I realised I could travel pretty light myself as well… As time went by I noticed that hostel beds weren’t that bad at all and that I hadn’t even thought about my apartment for a while. I didn’t care that I wasn’t sleeping on my bed or that I wasn’t using my car to move from one place to another. I realised that “stability” is actually inside of each one of us and it is not given by a bunch of furniture surrounded by four walls.
People don’t even find it necessary to think about the place they’ve left, actually most of the people I’ve kept in touch with and that have gone back home found it very hard to re-adapt to the routine they had before they left, I should know about this because it happened to me. I actually miss being away in the same way I thought I was going to miss home. I don’t know what is it about travelling that changes you but it really does; for me, it might have been the fact of talking and listening to so many people from such different places and learning about how we might have different points of view but in the end it's the same thoughts that cross our minds.
Even little details can trigger big changes in a person’s life; even a stupid apple falling off a tree may be a reason good enough to start wondering why things fall down and the rest is history… don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I’m going to come up with a theory that will change the course of physics and mechanics, I’m just saying that a trip like this gave me a glimpse of different options in my life and helped me see that it’s not my job to judge but to respect other people’s dreams no matter how “crazy” or different from mine they may be.
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