I remember the summer like it was yesterday. My parents had just purchased a trampoline, a major feat for my sister Sarah and I, and we’d broken it in all morning with giggles and leaps that left me feeling like I could bounce right to the moon. We’d tuckered out and laid our heads against the firm pad of the trampoline when I looked up to the roar of flight overhead.
On that day, on that trampoline, I dreamt of a life where I was never stagnant. Never bound by societal norms, or gender determinants. Never restricted from running, breathing the air of spaces & places & cultures different than the ones I’d always known and engrained throughout my childhood. Dreamed of an adult independence and confidence that kept my bags packed and head on a pillow other than my own for weeks at a time. There was something about that plane that I looked up at on that day – something about the airy fluffy easy bounce of that trampoline that willed me to set travel as a top priority in my life.
I frequently get comments about how frequently I travel, most people astonished I guess by the fact that my feet rarely stay planted on the ground for more than 3 weeks at a time. Each comment floods me with an array of emotions. Guilt. Question. Bewilderment. But mostly thrill. Thrill in knowing that I’m fulfilling that dream that that trampoline bouncing girl dreamt up for herself on that warm summer day all those years ago.
In the past week I’ve been afforded the amazing gift of reflecting on the values, moods, and attributes that contribute to and make up who I am as a person. Joy encouraged us to really take into account what makes us “us” and how that should lead the direction for where we want to go in life and the clients/jobs/future opportunities we want to have. In reflecting yesterday, there was an extreme wave of emotion that swept the room and I found my eyes welling with tears as Joy spoke. Words like fear, passion, life purpose, calling, dreams hold such an immense amount of weight for where I am in my life and even the mention of these words gets me incredibly emotional. In the midst of this emotion I wrote down a few values that when I think of my life 10, 20, 30 years from now I still want them to hold true. And the first thing that came to my mind and typically does when I’m reflecting, is the value and belief in the benefit and self awareness that comes with travel. As I did when I lay on that trampoline all those years ago, I felt proud for placing exploration so high on my list of priorities in the past couple of years, but also feeling like this value may possibly be an opportunity for so much more within the scope of my business as well. In what ways can I make travel another tier to what I do?? How do I continue prioritizing that in the midst of the craziness that is life??
I’m leaving Joy’s workshop today and heading back to Seattle with that “up in the sky” feeling. The feeling that I could float anywhere and everywhere I’ve ever dreamed of going. That feeling that all will be well, if I just follow my heart and stay on this path incorporating the aspects of who I am at my raw core and those things I value most in life.
photo cred : {jenn elliott blake}
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