SEEDS

One year ago, my partner Billy and I decided to quit our jobs and travel the world. With overly stuffed backpacks and some vague intentions (have some fun, get connected to our ancestral roots, and reflect on our career paths), we set off on a grand adventure. That adventure ended up entailing eight countries (seventeen for Billy), a six day trek through the Dolomites, a seven day trek on the Kumano Kodo, two WWOOF exchanges on Japanese farms, a seven thousand year old tree, a volcanic eruption, a herd of elephants, two leopards, too many karaoke sessions, two family reunions, a sister’s wedding, a shit ton of books and so many more experiences in between. Fast forward to the present day, I am reflecting on how much has happened since our journey began and how we developed the gumption to do something so drastic and out of character. 

Before the pandemic, I thought I had a strong understanding of who I was and what I wanted out of life. I took pride in the fact that my life “made sense” – that each chapter felt like a logical next step from the previous one. My career path was the consistent thread that I relied on to give me a sense of validation and purpose and it worked for years because I was in love with my job. But in the midst of the pandemic, the company that I was fiercely devoted to was going through rapid changes and I lost sight of the vision it was heading towards. My work started to feel less meaningful and my identity started to slowly dismantle as a result.

Yearning to regain a sense of control over my life, I joined a group of friends who were looking for a beautiful spot in nature to quarantine together. We ended up in Taos, New Mexico. Our days were filled with peaceful and simple joys – swimming in the Rio Grande, camping, rock-climbing, family dinners, movie nights, dancing under the desert sky, with some hours of laptop work sprinkled in between. It wasn’t some crazy magic – just good company, a cozy home, and beautiful nature – but somehow it was the perfect recipe to shield us from losing ourselves to the chaos around us. Falling in love with one of those friends probably helped to spice up my cup as well. 🙂

What was supposed to be one month in New Mexico quickly became two, which led to subsequent months in Montana, Maine, Georgia, Hawaii, and Colorado. Each experience helped to shake up my world and expose me to new lifestyles, landscapes, identities and communities. Although the group changed slightly with every move, the mixture of a safe space, nature, and good company remained the perfect recipe for happiness and gave me the courage needed to finally quit my job. Billy did the same and we took our travels overseas, beginning our year-long leap into the unknown!

To say that our travels were life-changing would be an understatement. Relatedly, it wouldn’t be true to say that they were always glamorous and easy. Amid the fun and adventure, we had bouts of crippling aimlessness that led to us nearly breaking up more than once. In month two, I was already reading Jean Paul Sartre and Simon de Beauvoir in hopes of finding some relief, or at least solidarity, from the anxiety. But this anxiety was the key manifestation that change was happening. 

When you have absolutely nothing to do, no one expecting anything from you, no hobbies or routines to distract you, you are left feeling incredibly vulnerable and naked. When you are stripped from any titles that previously validated you, you feel as though you are truly seeing yourself – your real self – for the first time in a long time. And it’s an awkward reunion. You may encounter parts of you that you don’t recognize or parts that you thought were gone years ago but were just buried deep due to the lack of attention given to them. You may realize that the world you left behind – the one that you gave all of your attention to – still goes on without you, which may make you question what is your purpose or if anyone really has a purpose. 

The odd combination of covid, travel, some existentialist literature, and many long walks through the woods was leading me to discover what it means to be free. And with that discovery came nauseatingly scary questions – Am I comprehending the finitude of my existence and living out these precious moments with as much authenticity, vigor and intentionality as I can? Or am I merely reacting to life and letting time slip through my fingers? I realized that so much of my life plan and perceived identity was based on my circumstances, my upbringing and what I felt I ought to do and be. I had the illusion of freedom but in actuality, I was making decisions in reaction to the limited options I could see in my periphery. My life was lacking in creativity, as I couldn’t imagine other ways of being, nor fathom the possibility of drastically changing up my existence. It took a pandemic to do that for me. 

In the following months, I experimented with my new sense of freedom. I tried filling my days with novelty and wild adventure to maximize every precious second. I tried dedicating entire days to a new hobby or skill to see if I can maximize my learning potential. But what ended up being the most meaningful and maximum use of my time was much smaller and simpler. It was spending hours in the garden with my grandpa and listening to my grandma’s unbeatable roars of laughter in the background; Walking hand in hand with my mom around the rice fields and getting made fun of for thinking about all this stuff; Reading for hours about prison reform on the beach and glancing over at Billy snorkeling with the fishies; Pillow talk with my sister and hearing about her spiritual journey which I previously only knew fragments of; Road trips with the family with no care in the world about where we are driving to because the car rides are the best part. These are all things that I had done before but experiencing them without distracted thoughts or illusions that “I have other things to do” is entirely different.  

By dismantling the narratives we previously operated within, Billy and I exposed ourselves to simple and beautiful lifestyles that we never imagined possible for ourselves. Having lived exclusively in cities, we didn’t know what it meant to be deeply connected to the land we live on and the food we eat; or to be reliant on the changing weather and have a profound reverence for nature and generational wisdom as a result. We didn’t know what slowing it down looked like or why anyone would want to do that and risk falling behind. But witnessing these lifestyles in rural America and all over Italy, Greece, Mexico, Japan, India, and Sri Lanka, we not only discovered that they are possible but that they resonate with some deep part of our souls. It took leaving our homes to know what home is for us. 

It has been a year plus some change and Billy and I are back in the States! We are excited to start crafting our lives bit by bit, experimenting with the lifestyles we discovered abroad, while adding our own flavors. We now have a beautiful dream to start our own family farm that will double up as a reentry home for people coming out of prison and sanctuary for rescued animals. Our lives look mostly like they did before our travels – we have daily routines and hobbies, we are diving back into our career passions, and nourishing our relationships – but we no longer have a fear of slowing it down and taking a pause to reflect and readjust to make sure that we are always living the way we want to. And whenever we forget, we have each other to remind one another that we are always free to choose.