October 30, 2015, At Sea towards Greek Islands

“Setting a baseline”

*The picture is of the ocean front patio I blogged from, in Mykonos on October 31, 2015. There are a lot of cats on the island. They’re pretty friendly- this little orange guy decided to hang out while I wrote things and had a beer.

Part of the value of documenting things in life, seems to be in making a reference point, or setting a baseline. Generally, I’m don’t keep a diary or really journal that much, so I haven’t done a good job of documenting important moments or changes in my life. However, I think the travel I’ll do this year represents a relatively important inflection point in my life, so I think it’s probably important to establish a baseline or reference point at the beginning, so I can look back and have an idea of what happened and changed.

There’s a few aspects of this setting a reference point that I think are important:

1. Documenting where I am, and to some extent where I came from.
2. Documenting in advance, what I’m hoping to get out of this experience, and generally why I think I’m doing it.

OK, for the first part. Where I am in life. I’m now 35 years old, single, no kids. I think I’m OK with that. At least as far as I can tell, I’ve had a relatively successful stretch academically and professionally, suffice to say that as far as I’m concerned, I don’t really have any other specific career goals or aspirations at the moment. Over the past few years, I’ve had relationships that have had a significant impact on my life. I don’t know that it’s a good idea to categorize those as successes or not. I have great friends and a great relationship with my parents. For better or worse, I haven’t encountered that much hardship in my life. Basically, things are (were) really, really good, and I’m deeply and profoundly thankful for everything I have in my life. (I think one relevant implication of this isn’t an escape from something bad…)

OK, for the second part. Why quit my job and travel for a year? What’s the point, and what do I hope to get out of it? In short, I’m hoping to be able to find some vision for my future that is not constrained by fear. Previously, most of my decisions in life have been conservative, “responsible” decisions that were made to minimize the risk of, (or in other words out of a fear of,) failure, rejection, or heartbreak. After going through some of these things the last year or two, I came to the realization that the reason why I hadn’t really experienced real disappointment, heartbreak, or rejection was because I never had the courage to make myself vulnerable to it. I never had the guts to bet big enough for it to hurt. It’s not a bad thing per se, especially early in life. It’s those choices that have gotten me to where I am now, which is a pretty good place… financially, personally, career-wise, etc. It’s just that I’m not willing to live that way anymore. Something potentially important and potentially great could be lost if I let the status quo persist. Continuously making choices from a conservative, scarcity-oriented or risk-averse mindset (or vision of the future) will inevitably preclude some possibilities for some things in the future. There’s no reward with out risk. There’s no chance for love if there’s no risk for heartbreak. Maybe it’s a little sad that I’m just learning it now, but that’s ok. The main thing is to not allow the status quo to somehow consume the next 20 years of my life with no change in how I live. Basically, the purpose of this trip is to create a context or circumstances that allow for a transition to occur- a transition from a scarcity-oriented and risk-averse mindset, to one of generosity, vulnerability and courage. (One quick note- the terms scarcity, generosity, courage, and transition/change are informed by books written Brene Brown, Michael Dauphinee, and William Bridges.)

I think there are aspects of traveling that are particularly conducive to this kind of transition- I’ll probably write a bit more about that later. I already mentioned the point about being nondescript and anonymous earlier. These are more notes for me to touch on later, but I think there are aspects of travel that cultivate a capacity for courage and empathy that other things can’t. For courage, I think it’s stuff related to uncertainty and control. For empathy (and humility to some extent,) I think it’s related to being confronted with diversity (as supposed to homogeneity,) and complexity that exists in the world- and in particular with crap like moral, cultural, economic, diversity… I think another quick point that I’ll touch on later, is what I mean by “vision” and how that relates to faith and certainty- but the long story short with that is it’s basically stuff Greg Boyd has spoken and written on- some of it in a book called “Benefit of the Doubt.”