(Side question: Do I know you? I've often wondered if people besides the ones I know actually read this...)
I have had an epiphany today. TA DAH!
Hallelujah. I love epiphanies. I get really excited when I get them, you know. But the fact that I had this fortuitous moment of sheer dumb eye-opening isn't what is most exciting.
What is most exciting, is what the epiphany was.
SO.
I'm going to sum it up in one phrase, and then rewind it (think: Quentin Tarantino), go back to the beginning and explain how I got to the actual epiphany.
Which is this: Oh my God. I'm going to be a travel writer.
NOW.
Reeeeeeee-wiiiiiiind.
I'm currently reading a travel book myself, you may have heard of it. Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.
Now, I don't want you to think that I only reached this conclusion because I'm being somewhat influenced by what I'm reading, because that's not true. I'm not caught up in some dumb story and deciding to throw everything away and follow in the author's footsteps, because let's face it: I wouldn't want to be her if you paid me. But if you did pay me, I'd want to have her experiences. I'd want to travel to Italy, India and Indonesia in one year and then write about it and have the book be such a world-wide success that it soon becomes a major motion picture (starring, let's not forget, JULIA ROBERTS) and my story is subsequently inspiring other young writers all over the nation. THAT, you could definitely pay me for.
Back to reality:
I'm not even far enough into the book to get that carried away. Honestly. I'm on page 44. Big threat? I think not. However, it did sort of catalyze my brain into a flurry of overactivity that caused a single spontaneous thought to burst forward and completely overwhelm my cognitive processes for the next two hours.
All it took was for her to write a few mediocre-scripted sentences about her first four days in Rome, and I was catalyzed. Boom. BOOM.
Memory lane is a very underestimated place, guys. I'm not really sure people realize just how powerful and so intricate it is. It's like Pandora. (I'm so excited about this, I'm seriously referencing Avatar in this post....!!)
Rome. I spent three days of my life within the walls of that ancient city almost three years ago. Those three days seem to have lasted more like three years, but even so, three years wouldn't be enough time to discover all the magic of that mysterious and entrancing place. Every sentence Gilbert writes in this book takes me back. The food, the alleyways that stretch on for miles and always wind up gently putting you right back where you need to be, the innumerable fountains, the people with their lusty, caramel colored eyes, the aqueducts, the gelato carts, the beauty of the Italian language, the smell of orange blossoms on the air, the churchbells ringing all over the city on sunday mornings.....
It was about this time when I was beginning to long for the dusk and twilight romance of Rome when I remembered the mountainous terrain and beautiful coastlines of Greece. The fresh, mediterranean diet, the colors, the smells, the donkeys in place of automobiles.... And that in turn took me back to the weekend my family spent in Victoria B.C. The boats, the beauty of the Buschart gardens, the outdoor dining, the ivy growing up the walls of the beautiful buildings. And I wanted all of them again, with a passion stronger than I have ever wanted them before. Only I wanted to spend weeks, months, years in each place. I wanted to discover new cultures, traditions, languages, food, people, animals, smells and sights so foreign to my eyes that I have to touch them all to make sure that my occular senses are not decieving me.
And then I realized how much I wanted to write about all of it. Every ancient wall, every new flavor, every mysterious new person.... Every flower, every window, every street painting.
Following this realization, every destination I have ever desired poured into my thoughts.
I thought of living in Ireland and surfing in County Donegal. I thought of London and the theater. I thought of Holland and windmills, and Amsterdam and houseboats. I thought of Cape Town, South Africa, and I thought of the cuisine of Morocco, and the beauty of the mosques. I wanted to compare the churchbells of Rome on a sunday morning to the churchbells of Jerusalem on the Sabbath. I want to embark on my own crusade to the Holy City, I want to stand in front of the Sphinxes in Egypt and I want to dance the night away in Barcelona with a red flower in my hair. I want to drink good beer in Germany, and visit the castle that my grandmother visited when she went. I want to travel to Provence, France and experience the French Riviera and gain 10 pounds from all the delicious food. I want to get lost in Sicily. I want to ride elephants in Thailand. I want to see the crocodiles in Australia, and I want to witness the monks in India, I want to visit the fair city of Verona and write a letter to Juliet. I want my breath to be taken away by the beauty of the Swiss alps, and I want to learn to ski in Sweden. I want to do it all and I want to write about every aspect of it.
I want to have a hundred memorable romances, I want to collect destinations and experiences and I want to completely immerse myself in cultures that I don't understand. I want to gain knowledge from the college of LIFE not education!
Traveling is the one thing that I've always known was in my future, and writing is the only career that I could absolutely love pursuing while I travel. So why not combine the two?
I don't know how I'm going to do it, I just know that I will.
It's a peaceful bit of knowledge, tucked deep away in my heart.
It says: "Don't worry about the how, or the when... Just be patient. It will work itself out."
And for me? That's all I need.
"All you have to be by the age of 23 is yourself."
That's the attitude that I have about my life right now. God will provide, if this is what I'm truly meant to do. And until He shows me otherwise, I have to believe this is my future, and that the possibilites are endless.
So there you have it.
My epiphany, and a pretty good story if you ask me.
I like to think I could build an entire bestseller from this sort of list. :)
"Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is mystery. Today is a gift, that's why they call it the present."
-Eleanor Roosevelt
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