Within and Without

(me at 14)

January 28th, 2002

Sometimes I feel like 14, other times I feel like 3 1/2, other times I feel like 75. So many things to make me feel young and child-like... so many things to make me feel old and withered. Some things I wish I had never seen or never been exposed to. There other things that I want to be experiencing. 

No matter how much I swing around in feelings, I'm still me. I want to try and accept that. It's hard, but I'll try.

My life is going to be a huge adventure, a path that is uncertain. At the same time it is very certain because Krishna is in my life, and there IS a path. At least I'm on a path, not stumbling through the forest.

***

I was a pretty existential kid, huh?

I guess I'm still an existential kid.

When I read the above journal entry, I realize that my life has been a huge adventure. In the past 12 years, I have tirelessly ventured outward to explore the world with its languages and cultures and foods and expressions of love. I have rafted raging rivers and climbed glaciers; I have prayed in cathedrals and temples and mosques and literally circled the world.  

Yet I have experienced boredom in my life, sometimes while doing those very same adventurous activities. So painful. Why? Why?

So even more powerfully, year after year I have relentlessly ventured inward. Questions drive me to seek the essence, seek the experience of the soul. In this sense, the journal entry above when I was 14 is my adventure.

I experience boredom to the extent that I am disconnected from my journey towards my self and God.

Every day is a new day to stay in the fire. To wake up each morning to an adventure within and without.

This blog post included. 

"Adventure is not outside man; it is within." - George Eliot