DAY 10-11: Finding Neverland!

Who do we really are? What makes US? What determines the truth of oneself?

When you become a traveler the “truth” that you have carried around your whole life, in the form of a presentation card, disintegrates the farther away you go from home. What has defined us dissolves like raindrops al contacto con el mar, and vanishes in the infinite blue horizon. Can you really define a person by the job that pays its bills, instead of by the dreams they may have had, or still even dream? Do we have the right to determine how a kid will grow up to be just by judging its parent’s life choices and behavior, or by the friends that surrounds them? Should we pint point the kind of being someone is simply by scrutinizing their off spring’s successes or failures, instead of by the closeness of their relationship and the love they cast for each other? The amount of school diplomas and Honors one has achieved it’s what’s paramount; being actually inspired by the path you have chosen is just for losers. “Be a Doctor darling, you’ll make money” “I know you hate the sick, but you will get use to it.” Dreams are measured by their size, instead of by how much pride and joy they will bring the day you finally fulfill them. With how many and how often one has fucked, determines more accurately who one is than how profoundly one has loved. The cash accumulated in the vault represents hard work; how it was accumulated… who cares! 

You are your job, your bank account, your university degree. You are who you married not how hard you work to make that commitment to LOVE -not to social expectations- last. The more tangible things clutter your space, the more admiration you will receive. It is the accumulation of crap, instead of wisdom, adventure, love and friendship that shows how good you have done for yourself. Yet, while pursuing all this quantifications that are supposed to determine you, you lose your true nature. One day you wake up and you just can’t recognize the reflection in the mirror. Who is this person, and when did it take over? If your seven-year-old self could see you now what would it said to you? Would it keep on living after confronting its future?

When you are a traveler. When everything you own fits in a backpack. When your profession means nothing unless you are a doctor in a life or death experience. When your beauty is covered with pounds of dirt. When clothes become only something that covers you. When languages become your most precious possession, and instinct your most profound and important piece of wisdom. When those who you meet don’t care about where you live, what your family do, or how much green bills you have in your pockets. Instead, they are fascinating about why are you there, for how long, where are you going next and why, what your dreams are, and what are you searching for; then you really start finding the kid that still leaves somewhere beneath the roughen skin. People likes you, or don’t because they can connect directly to your soul; and souls know better their perfect match because they are pure beings. There is not, “well, I’ll be his friend because I can get something from him,” because what are you going to get really, a better train wagon, or a $2 dinner for free??? There is no more profound interest than finding the right play buddy. You become a kid again; you let your instincts guide you, and you start listening to the voice you had shot down so long ago. Everything is new, everyday is an adventure, every color is a new rainbow, every sound an unchained melody, is like start walking again. Have you seen how babies get totally lost on that little dry leaf they found in the ground while crawling to mom’s arms? That is how you become, lost in all the beauty nature can offer, lost in all the share stories, laughs and tears, lost in all the miracles that are around you every day, but we are just too busy showing off to notice.

I always say that India taught me to see with my heart and not with my eyes; to feel with my soul, and not with my senses; to close my eyes and find the best of friends within me. Traveler’s friendships are based on this description of oneself, and that's maybe why you make the best, the most unconditional and most long lasting friends during this adventures, because what takes many years for friends in your regular habitat to know and understand, takes hours for two open souls to attain. It is this freedom of being what I think most of travelers miss when we are back home, when we have to change the backpack for the briefcase, the “what I like, I love, I dream,” for “what I do, I have, I will,” for “how much green” instead of “how much feel.” And even for us, fortunate ones, who have at least tasted how life was really supposed to be, find it almost unrealistic to keep the just reborn child alive. Thus, traveling becomes an addiction because is the drug that brings you back to bases, lets your true self out, and the seven year old you buried time ago under layers of adulthood, comes again out to play.

So, in my book, true happiness can be attained when you don’t let life kill the kid you can still be. Ask your mom today who were you, how did you interacted, and what did you dreamed off before your heart started to shrink, and see the difference between now and then. Otherwise, just grab that dusty backpack, or buy a new one if you never had one, and go on the search for Neverland!