Bowling Alley Revelations
Last night, I fell in love with someone’s story. A boy name Andy from England, he is my age. Immediately after graduating, he moved to South Africa for 8 months to live and work, propelled by nothing else but a lifelong fascination. Afterwards he spent another 3 months in Kenya and Tanzania, distributing food packages through a church organization. I wanted to help people, is what he says.
These are the kind of people you will meet at a Lao bowling alley circa 1am.
And now he is here, in the latter half of a six month trip. New Zealand to Fiji to Australia to Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia. He goes home and works only to make enough money to travel again. The truest part of me knows he’s got it right. That the problem with American social norms is that there is too much to do and too little to live for.
I think about the fear I felt surrounding this trip. To leave the people I love, to go to a place I couldn’t before locate on a map let alone conceptualize, and make home in that space. To leave when the proper next step is to begin the frantic job search, to rush into the abyss.
This trip has made me hungry. I know there is no such thing as a geographical cure, nor am I looking for one. I have gone through the painful, humbling process humans must experience to be able to live comfortably in their own skin. This trip has made the world a delicious mystery. It has made me hungry.
None of this is to say I am not excited to go home. I count down the days. There are people I miss so much they have left an untreatable ache in their absence. But I made a promise to myself in a badly lit bowling alley too late last night that it’s not over. That when I go home I will loosen the chains around my ankles that I myself put there. That I will strive to always seek freedom over security.
Blah. Laying at the pool all day today.
