My phone lit up with a text notification from a friend. It read: "What are you getting up to in Mexico for so long?"
I put down the sock I was knitting and stared at my phone for half a minute. What do I answer to this? What am I doing?
Finally, in my attempt at being mysterious and whimsical, I replied: "Being spontaneous." And then I sat and thought about it some more.
In the past few years, I've recognized a behavioral pattern that gets me into situations I never thought I would be in. I get an idea in my head of something that I want to do or a place I want to go to, and then I tell everybody that that's precisely where I'm going and what I'm doing. This is before I've even thought about it too much. Then everyone expects me to do the thing, so I'm like, "Well, now I gotta do it!" I dig myself a hole; the people around me are the shovels.
It can be horrifying but in a good way. Sometimes, it's the last thing I want to do, but I never regret it. I never would have done it if I didn't feel just a little pressure.
And now I've done it again. I'll leave my familiar places and faces for a big, exciting world. I'll be flying to Mexico to explore the world. And myself.
When I decided to go to Mexico and started telling everyone, my initial excuse was that I didn't want to spend another winter in the slushy grey hole we call Vancouver Island. I've spent plenty of winters in the land of tacos, and I was grown up enough to do what I wanted, so I thought, "Why not?" That was the only reason I needed it. But everyone else seemed to want more.
My last few weeks working at the coffee shop consisted of answering this question: "Why are you going to Mexico?". I had different answers depending on my mood. "I'm going to volunteer on organic farms and learn about different ways to care for the earth" was well-respected. "Sitting on the beach and eating mangos" was always laughed at. "Just because" was returned with a blank face of non-understanding.
It wasn't until the 1st of October rolled around that it hit hard. By the end of the month, I would be very far away. But the scariest realization is that I will have near complete control over where I go and what I do, how long I stay in one place, and how many churros I eat. It's the absolute freedom I'm intimidated by, but it's one of the main reasons I'm going.
I'm making it sound like my journey begins as soon as I set foot on the plane, but it's just the start of a chapter. Life is made of baby steps and antelope leaps, and this is an antelope. Comparable only to the leap of moving out on my own and becoming an "adult."
As I ponder and rant in this blog post, I've considered how irrelevant I am to the world. What a tiny human I am in a sea of beautiful humans. The best I can do in this world is the best I can do. I can connect and touch the people around me and be touched by them, the places I see, and the things I do.
At the end of the day, the goal in life is to enjoy it and be happy. No matter what that looks like for each person and for you. I hope that you can enjoy life and be happy. If you do, the people around you will too.
My friend understood that. His response was: "Ooh! That sounds fun."
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