Recently we’ve been feeling in a bit of a funk. With a long and busy high season behind us life had slowed down at work but we were finding ourselves spending every weekend with errands, doctor’s appointments, and the like and began to fully realize how errant we were in not planning a fall vacation. With Costa Rica still two months away…an eternity when in a funk, and fall weather turning to winter my mood was grim.
While speaking with a staff member asking how she was doing she mentioned still being in emotional recovery from losing her beloved pup and experiencing the dreaded feeling of being stagnant. As I empathized with her and expressed feeling the same she said “Well, don’t get off the bus”.
Don’t get off the bus?
She explained that she’d just been speaking to an artist mentor of hers from her days in Puerto Rico. As she explained to him her grief over losing B.C. and her inability to get back to her painting and writing he told her that “whatever you do, don’t get off the bus. We’re all on a bus towards our destination and while sometimes our bus takes an unknown turn or even stops once in a while, don’t get off the bus.”
Don’t get off the bus.
In the end, I’ve come to believe in something I call “The Physics of the Quest.” A force in nature governed by laws as real as the laws of gravity. The rule of Quest Physics goes something like this: If you’re brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting, which can be anything from your house to bitter, old resentments, and set out on a truth-seeking journey, either externally or internally, and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher and if you are prepared, most of all, to face and forgive some very difficult realities about yourself, then the truth will not be withheld from you. ~ Eat, Pray, Love.
I firmly believe stagnant can take on two different paths. There is, of course, being physically stagnant and attached to a particular location. For those of us with itchy feet, this is a continual struggle but we are finding peace in this being the right spot in this time and place. We are a 5-minute walk from a stunning beach, we spend a lot of time with friends, and this location has allowed us to spend invaluable time with Jim’s parents during this period of their life.
Mental stagnation is a WHOLE other thing. The more I drifted into the emotions of the funk the less I wrote, the less I worked on my photography, and the less I got done. The ideals of daily yoga and Spanish practice fell by the wayside.
Don’t get off the bus.
That one sentence, combined with finding the extraordinary interview with the Expedition Portal Overlanders of the year; Lisa Morris & Jason Spafford. changed everything.
I hadn’t followed them previously but spent several hours enthusiastically catching up on their life of adventure. Sometimes we realize we spend too much time attempting to determine a final destination, a final goal and it can be easy to lean away from the idea of enjoying the journey.
Lisa’s final thoughts were the perfect anecdote to an uninspired mood. When asked for words of wisdom to those looking to follow a similar path she said:
Know that it’s no real consequence where you start or end up. Everything and everyone present on your journey matter most—rarely the final destination. If you don’t arrive where you’re headed, that’s not necessarily a negative, maddening as it may feel—you’ll have spent time absorbing the enthralling places and personalities along the way. No doubt, the first trip won’t be your last. You’ll evolve after everyone and refine your wants and needs for the next. What counts is that you’re out there channeling all that energy into a new landscape of experience—come freezing one’s maracas off in a winter wilderness or having the mind and cobwebs blown in a sun-scorched valley. Ultimately, Overlanding will make your one wild and precious life layered with substance, sometimes hard-going, but often euphoric. And above all else, you’ll be enriched.
Our beach dog walk that afternoon focused on remembrances of our past journeys around the globe and thoughts on where our path will end up meandering next. I added the Duolingo app to my phone and signed up for Adriene’s new 30-day yoga challenge for January.
As another trip around the sun begins my focus will be on embracing everyone and everything every day, for we never know when this remarkable journey will end or what twists and turns we’ll discover along the way.
Don’t get off the Bus.