In Just One Month...

In just one month, I will be at the mercy of the world. I suppose we are at the mercy of the world at all times, but it never quite feels that way when you are someplace familiar. At a place called home, there is some deeper sense of safety, perhaps called ignorance.

But in just one month I will call a new place home, a place I can't yet imagine- although I have tried. It is never as you imagine it to be. I fancy myself a good traveler, for I itch for an "in" wherever I go. I want the local experience, the day to day-- knowing it will never be my day to day. One of the greatest rewards of traveling is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which nothing is so familiar that it is taken for granted. How dull it is to take things for granted, I say. But to embrace a change, the unfamiliar, that's where growth happens, a knowledge you can't get from a text book.

India is said to be the one place on the face of earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home, dating back to the dream of existence. It is the motherland of language, history, tradition, and spirituality. It is the birthplace of yoga and the most vibrant of colors. It seems there are such few places in the world that can claim such significant, valuable, and timeless creations, and India in all its glory does so with humility. A humility I hope to learn from during my time there.

I am going to India primarily to study and practice Yoga. Ever since I decided to take this trip, people have asked me, "Why India?" A perfectly valid question. In my opinion, it is essential to study something from it's place of creation, from it's natural existence point and not your own. Studying yoga in California, to me, seems as much a learning experience as being an oceanographer in Nebraska. Your information would be second-hand at best. Passion requires sacrifice, time, and often travel. Things that seem too expensive to fore-go for just anything but when it's something grounded by passion, you don't consider it costing at all. All things are gained, even the set backs. It's one of the things I will have the privilege of learning from with the ability to harm none. A large check on the old bucket list. As Mark Twain has said, “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

And that I shall... in just one month.