have love, will travel

Not all those who wander are lost. (JRR Tolkien)


When I chose my word last year, I knew I was in for a lot of surprises. Explore, after all, is a big word & it made me feel like a child... at once sad to be leaving home for the first time & excited to be going out there on my own. It made me nervous, hopeful, excited, brave & adventurous. It made me feel how each human being on this planet should feel ~ alive.

Explore pushed me further out of my comfort zone & kicked my sorry excuses out of the window. It got me off my thinking chair & into the world. It got me to stop dreaming & start doing. The Holstee manifesto could not have said it any better

This is your life. Do what you love. Do it often.

And so I did, big time :) I started 2011 with a colorful visit to my hometown, swam with whale sharks, surfed Bali for a month; traveled with my yoga mat & spent intensive weeks on it with some of the most amazing spirits and the best teachers in the world. I went on spontaneous trips with unexpected company & that showed me I could fall in love with another part of the universe.

My word made me open to new connections & rethink about old ones. It made me appreciate the love I have in my life every 5 seconds. I'm deeply grateful & blessed to be taking part of the universe's abundance. All the traveling is certainly not because of a million bucks in my bank account (though it wouldn't hurt to have that as well!). I could easily say that many friends have pockets deeper than mine (they choose to spend that differently & I could only hope, passionately). No. Money can only take you so far. I say love takes you the farthest you need to go.

There has got to be passion or else traveling & transiting for 24 hours straight between 4 different terminals with your surfboard will drive you insane. It's got to be mad love or why else endure a 2 day stopover in between countries, barely enough time for you to unpack & switch bags. It may be exciting to travel to go from one beautiful place to the next but it's also exhausting at the same time. To the point of losing your voice for 8 straight days, or to the miserable point of getting pneumonia. Exploring does come with a price, but a price I'm willing to pay all in the name of love.

I read somewhere that in order to be an explorer of the world, one must notice the stories around you. To use all your senses in your investigations. You have to notice your own story unfold... see where these journeys are really taking you. And mine have taken me to realize what the best part of traveling is.

Coming home.

THANK YOU 2011. You've been such an amazing ride. :)

breaking surface

(image from weheartit)

Let no one keep you from your journey,
no rabbi or priest, no mother
who wants you to dig for treasures
she misplaced, no father
who won't let one life be enough,
no lover who measures their worth
by what you might give up,
no voice that tells you in the night
it can't be done.

Let nothing dissuade you
from seeing what you see
or feeling the winds that make you
want to dance alone
or go where no one
has yet to go.

You are the only explorer.
Your heart, the unreadable compass.
Your soul, the shore of a promise
too great to be ignored.

(words by mark nepo)

path of the heart

When you open fully to your experience you discover how wonderful it is to be alive; sometimes funny, sometimes tragic, sometimes ordinary, sometimes sublime. You learn not to shut down when feelings become bothersome; to stay awake even when it’s unpleasant. This is the path of the heart: to develop tenderness toward yourself by opening to the wonders and complexities of your self, which allows you to open to the wonders and complexity of the world. - Dr. Gail Parker


i have been asking my self these days the big Why's (why can't it work this way, why can't it be...) and i realize that i really should stop questioning and start trusting. each time i question my own decisions, i plant a seed of doubt that makes me forget the reasons that have brought me here. it's so easy to give in to sadness especially if it's something that we've grown so used to in life. but when we've taken on a path of seeking & healing, we can no longer ignore our heart's desire to be happy.

one half of me has already started Exploring ~ moving forward with the intent of fully living out dreams which have been shelved for far too long. yet the other half of my self is still bleeding from the cut that it took to break away from the very things which have kept me bound. this must be what it means to be fully present, when we can sit with happy & sad and embrace both equally. when we can allow the sadness to pass through, as gracefully as we possibly can without fighting it. when we can remember joy or the hope of it, even in the darkest moments.

such is the path of the heart. to love both light & dark with gratitude & compassion.

what keeps me from shrinking back is the belief that there's no loss when love is truly present. it's a matter of expanding how we think love should be. love can't be limited to promises & relationships... to anniversaries & traditions. love is bigger than any of these. it's only when we begin to understand the hugeness of love that sadness no longer becomes threatening. like a dust of rain cloud in a vast blue sky.

finding my word

Nature does not hurry. Yet everything is accomplished. - Lao Tzu



my word came to me as i knew it would. Explore. one beautiful powerful seed that contains a universe of possibilities.

explore my dreams. explore new continents. explore a new life.

it's such a brave risk-taking word & i'm gathering all my courage to start living it. after all explore means leaving something behind. it means letting go.

i have let go of certain things in the past that have come back in my life. i ask myself is it fate working? or is it my refusal to completely release myself from the things that are holding me back? i ask because i find myself facing similar patterns and i wanna change that. i look back to the year that has passed & realize that when i set the intention to open myself to new possibilities, i was only really looking at specific outcomes. and so when that didn't pan out, i found myself going back to the place i had just left behind. it's kinda like getting your feet wet in the water & running back to shore when the water got too cold.

so this year i resolve to be a little less drastic, to allow myself to stay in the water & observe whatever arises. to explore this distrust & in doing so, find the root of it and completely let it go. like my dear friend & fellow wanderer said - embrace this uncertainty because it's a great reminder of your intention. embracing uncertainty doesn't mean stewing in it or settling, but really sitting with it face to face & getting to the bottom of things.

once again i'm reminded to trust grace completely. because the most important things in life shouldn't take too much effort to make it work. as my yoga practice is teaching me, it has to be a beautiful balance between effort & surrender. and like a voice guiding me in the dark, i trust that my word will take me here, to a place of balance & greater heights. most of all, to a place of trust.