Maybe, Instead

I want to travel with a stranger in strange lands, outside of my body and of what’s comfortable until I find something related to what’s known as wicked. I want to explore with bare feet and dry hands until soft—or on the other hand—until so hardened by experience and unwonted emotion that I welcome deterioration. I want to know what it means to journey without a map, without knowledge of place or understanding because being comfortable is becoming nauseating, and I need to grow.

I often feel selfish for these feelings of destination envy, of constantly craving something more, or to go further. I feel as if it’s wrong to stray from the everyday—from the 9 to 5, the 40 hours a week, the family, the kids, the commitment. I feel shame over my lustful dreams of becoming lost in the darkness of a forest across the globe, or of exploring something labeled as abandoned or unimportant.

I believe that to stay still is to die slowly while still breathing, and I have to believe that my existence means more. That my soul—wherever it may have started—isn’t wasted in the new life it’s been granted. But how do you begin to find and acknowledge purpose? How do you grasp it without first breaking its possibilities? How do you accept whatever that purpose may be in a world that discourages beginnings and easy opportunity?

And God forbid my skin wasn’t white. God forbid I knew actual struggle. And never would I downplay or try to ensure that my struggles to those elsewhere are unimportant or unmatched. Because in absolutely no world is that true. But to ignore the struggle of any is to lack empathy, and that’s something I strive never to be towards myself or towards anyone else on this earth: unempathetic.

The power of mindset can be terrifying. You can feel negativity as strongly as you can feel fire on flesh, but to feel positive about the world we experience everyday, has become increasingly harder to do without assistance. Racism, sexism, radical unsettlement, catastrophically low unemployment rates and uncontrollable debt—it eats away at one's ability to find true happiness. And yes, though some will say that to seek happiness in the everyday is to seek insanity.

But why is it a curse to want happiness? To create joy in a human being is to create miracles, and art and understanding. Happiness creates unity, peace, tranquility. So why is it that when we tell others that all we want is to be happy, that’s it viewed as something foolish to desire?

When I’m happy, I’m adventurous and creative and clear in emotion and thought. When my mother is happy, she is a business woman to put any to shame. When my grandmother is happy, she is light embodied. When my grandpa is happy, he is laughter and sophistication, and when my partner is happy, he is music and class and made of magic.

Now, look at the other end of this spectrum when speaking to the overall human experience. When discouraged, there is disruption, unease, and anger. When there is blatant attack, there is destruction, unrest, and rage, inequality, hate, and suffrage. When there is depression, there is impurity, exhaust, and lack of care for self and surrounding. And even when here is hope to be found, sadly, that hope seems to stem from the darkest times and often, can be overshadowed by boastful ego or inbred ignorance.

So maybe instead of preaching this hate we spew as if it were bred into our every breath, we encourage exploration and acceptance. Maybe instead of calling it debate, we change it to conversation and education. Maybe instead of telling our women—and our men— to control their emotions, we tell them to let them live louder than they ever have before in order to be heard in the ways that truly matter.

Instead of shaming the unordinary, I believe we need to learn to praise it, and breaking the societal norms that are slowly killing spirit and dreams should become what we place focus on for the generations to come.

People need to understand how fast this life moves, and how little of we actually have. But when given the chance, you can pack into this small life moments larger than any life previously believed. And that—that’s what beauty is.

Beauty is knowing there’s more than what’s been presented, and finding something larger than ourselves. It’s finding happiness in the peculiar and finding dreams in the nightmares. It’s traveling beyond yourself and your hometown and what you know by heart to discover what you didn’t even know existed. It’s adventure and knowledge and growth.

To grow is to live and to be human. So live while you’re allowed breath. Cherish all you don’t know and absorb what comes.

Dream until tired, and then—for the sakes of those who can’t—dare to dream all over again.