“The core of man’s spirit comes from new experiences.”
- Christopher McCandless

New experiences remind me that I’m alive.  Routine drives me nuts.  I don’t like getting to the point where I question my sanity, but it has happened a time or two.  Not while I was hiking on the Great Wall.  Or eating my daily kimchi kimbap in Korea.  Or touring cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde.  Or learning to make coconut curry on the banks of the Mekong.  Or learning taekwondo in a foreign language.  If I go without these types of things for an extended period of time, I get sad.

What that means about me, I’m not sure.  I remember watching an episode of Numb3rs right after we came back to the States.  In it, one of the characters had just come back from a trip to the moon and upon his return lived in a monastery instead of going back to his normal life.  His friend asked him what his problem was and his answer struck a cord with me: “That I will habituate and lose the vision”.

When people experience something truly unique, the thought of going back to the way it was is hard to fathom.  Unfortunately, it’s easy to forget and to start going through the motions.  I feel like the few experiences that I’ve had thus far have not only changed my life but they’ve also changed the way I’m willing to live my life in the future.  I know that I am blessed.  I don’t feel like I’m taking for granted the life that I have.  YET, I still need change.  Badly.

I find myself almost constantly re-evaluating.  Making sure that the direction I’m going, and the things I’m putting my time into, are worth it.  Making sure that I’m not getting distracted with the noise all around me and that everything I am doing, I’m doing on purpose.  I don’t want to go through the motions, especially if the motions don’t bring any kind of joy, peace or satisfaction.

I love what Henry David Thoreau said: “I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, To put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to die Discover that I had not lived.”

Spending time with my husband, learning, seeing new things… these are the things that I truly care about.  Obviously I also like to keep my standard of living at a certain level, which is why 1) I’m not a hobo and 2) I keep a job, but I don’t want the idea of having and getting more things be a major focus in my life.  The thing I think about constantly or the wayI try to advance.  In the end, or sometimes far before “the end”, it can be lost.

So, the plan is to get out more.  This winter has been a time for me to think about a lot of things.  I’ve scaled a lot of things back and distanced myself from all but a few people.  It was important for me to get my bearings so that I could move forward.  I’m excited about the future.  I can hardly wait to do, eat and see whatever we choose next.  And then change it up and do it again. And while I hope that my death is far away, I want my last words to be similar to those written by Christopher McCandless: “I HAVE HAD A HAPPY LIFE AND THANK THE LORD. GOODBYE AND MAY GOD BLESS ALL!”