Eight Years And Still Going Strong

It is the beginning of October 2005.  I do not yet know it, but my life is about to change forever.  There is an idea in my head, there is an opportunity to do something completely different in my life.  Perhaps it is a fools opportunity, but it remains an opportunity nonetheless.  In one hand, I have everything that I wanted: great job and career, business travel, nice apartment, sports car, platinum cards, no debts.  I did not come by this easily, I had to work extremely hard to achieve it, to have a little luck on my side, and to strive forward purposefully.  And now, I sit in that same apartment, staring out across the city, crushed under a leaden sky, to the cathedral spire that rises so majestically to the heavens, and I contemplate leaving it all behind, throwing it all away on some whimsical chance of adventure, to go backpacking to South East Asia.  Was I out of my mind?  Eight years later, I know the answer.

Why would anyone in their right mind even contemplate doing such a thing?  The answer to that question is that I believe they would not.  You see, decisions such as this are not made in the head by someone who is thinking rationally and logically.  A decision like this is made in the heart, and as such, it defies logic, since it was made with love.  I turned my back and walked away from a life that offered me financial security and stability, that offered me a pension plan, the chance of early retirement, healthcare, paid vacations, and other benefits.  I held in my hand the kind of life to which we are taught to aspire towards by our parents, our teachers, and our governments, that we are sold on a daily basis by advertisers and the media, the life that society as a whole, has decided is the right kind of life, the successful kind of life.  My problem, if that's what it is was, was that my heart held a very different view of what it deemed to be a success in life. 

I think this is a very important point.  Not everyone shares the same dream and that is a good thing.  Some people are born to be doctors, nurses, teachers, farmers, priests and many other occupations besides.  You know these people because they are the ones who exude passion for what it is they do.  I was not born to sit behind a computer, to stare at spreadsheets, no matter how important the decisions my interpretations of the data might be.  I had no passion for what it was that I did.  I just happened to be good at it and to thrive on the sense of importance and belonging that it gave to me.  These were nothing more than false idols and in my heart, I knew it.  I always had.  I didn't want to sit and discuss business at the restaurant, on the plane, in the airport lounge, on a Sunday evening teleconference.  I wanted to be away, to be free, to shake off the costume and the facade I wore and to be my true self again.  The further my career progressed, the more invested I was, the harder that became.  I saw my colleagues and I regarded them almost in an out of body way, as if I was not really there, I was looking on remotely.  These were, on the outside at least, different creatures to me.  Perhaps I was the wolf in sheep's clothing and they were the genuine article.  Perhaps, now that I think about it, they were exactly the same as I was, they too wore their masks, recited well rehearsed lines, and acted out their own part of the play.  Maybe they saw me in the exact same way that I saw them? I never thought about it in that way before.  But I saw them as company men and company women and I was not one of them.  I was different, I knew that I would break away from it, I felt it within me, had known it for so long, for too long, and I simply waited for the right moment, the right opportunity.  Whilst I waited, I positioned my life in such a way that when the opportunity came, I would have no reason to say no.

In the late summer of 2005, that opportunity arrived.  As the words were voiced to me one evening down at the pub, over a pint of the black stuff, I knew the answer without a moment of hesitation or doubt.  Here was the chance to make a change, to have an adventure, the likes of which I had only dreamed.  A few weeks later, under pressure to make a business trip to Chicago, to attend an important client meeting, I found myself talking with my boss on the telephone and I heard myself resign from my job.  What had I done?  I knew that even though I had resigned and was working out my notice period, I could get back in again.  I knew I was well respected and liked, that all I had to say was that I had made a mistake, and everything would go back to how it was before.  But I never did.  Even after I left, during the period I was selling all of my material possessions in readiness for my adventure, I still felt sure they would take me back, it was still not too late.  I could cancel the ticket, call up my old boss, say sorry, negotiate my way back in.  The thought did occur to me, it was just not as strong a pull as the pull of adventure.  I was finally out, standing on the verge of something new, something terrifying and I was about to find out whether my dream was just a fool's wandering mind and nothing more.

I gave up everything I had known, I took away all the securities of family, home, comfort, income, and known routine and forced myself into a life unknown.  I had a round the world plane ticket that would take me from London to Bangkok, to Sydney, to Auckland and then back to London.  I had a place to stay in Bangkok for my first few nights, with a friend of my sister.  Other than that, I had no plan, no idea where I was going to go, no idea what I was really doing.  In many ways, this is exactly what I wanted.  I didn't want to know.  Not because I was afraid of it but rather because I wanted to live on the edge, to go from place to place and have my first priorities those of food, water and shelter.  I wanted to get back to the basic needs of humanity, to throw off everything else, and to see what exactly there was inside of me when I exposed myself completely to life.  And so I did.

My adventure would unfold in a random, rather haphazard fashion, until at some point in time a few months later, my heart found the very thing for which it had always sought: a paradise island of white sand and palms, a turquoise ocean that lapped at its shores, wooden huts on stilts close to the waters edge.  A picture postcard version of my heaven.  I discovered like minded people, I found myself with fellow wanders and adventurers.  And in this heaven, I discovered the thing that would change my life again, I discovered scuba diving.  But more than this, I found a place where I could be completely and utterly free, where I was able to be my true self, to indulge myself in my fantasies, to get up close to nature and to witness her miracles, a place where I discovered the meaning of life.  That place was under the ocean.

In scuba diving, I found my passion.  I discovered something that no one had ever talked to me of doing before.  Had someone recognised my love of the ocean, of being in the ocean, of playing around down at the beach, then perhaps they might have suggested it to me, but being from England, and despite living at the seaside, scuba was not something I knew, other than on some old Jacques Cousteau documentary.  I had to take a chance on life in order to make this discovery.  If I had not, perhaps I would still be looking for my thing, perhaps I would now be sitting in an office, spreadsheet in front of me, jiggling numbers, and not writing a blog post from my bed in Costa Rica, with the sound of early morning calls from the birds as company.

Now here I am, eight years later and I am still going strong.  Eight years of dreams and adventures.  I returned back to England after Asia and four months later, I was sitting in a lecture theatre on campus at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, for my first ever lecture.  I graduated three years later with a bachelors degree in Information Systems and an A grade average across all eighteen papers that I sat.  On another whim, I travelled to South Africa, where I rekindled my love of scuba diving and there, made the decision to become an instructor.  A decision that brought me across the Atlantic, to the Caribbean and to Central America.  In the process of all that has happened, I made perhaps the biggest discovery of them all: I found my true self, and I came to an understanding of my life, of who I am.  I still do not know what the future holds in store for me, no one can ever truly know that answer, and I do not wish to know, since that is the mystery and adventure of life. 

So, eight years later, was I out of my mind?  The answer to that question is an unequivocal yes.  Completely and utterly.  You see, I had to be out of my mind so that I could accomplish all that was required.  I used to be described as being headstrong and stubborn, but that was never the truth.  The truth of my life is that I am heartstrong and for me, that is what has made all of the difference, that is what has allowed me to go on this voyage of discovery.  Of course I was out of my mind, there can be no doubt of that, because I was in another place entirely.  I was in my heart. And there I shall remain.

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Why You Must Dare To Escape Your Comfort Zone

Lately, I have found myself at a fork in the road.  In truth, I've been here for some time, staring blankly down each path that lies before me, attempting to figure out which is the right one, agonising over which option is most suitable, and utterly unable to decide which is the path that I should take.  Yet, no matter how hard I stared, trying in vain to see through the darkness that obscures each of these futures, I have been unable to fathom the direction in which I need to go.  For some time, I have reasoned with myself that it has been because I was unsure, seeing equal merit in each one, knowing that they all held the promise of the future.  That was until today, when a sudden moment of clarity and insight dawned upon me.  The reason I have not moved forward from the place where I am is because of one reason only: I am afraid.

You see, my life has become far too comfortable.  Take now, this moment for example.  It's 6:04am, I'm sitting up in bed, daylight from an already risen sun streaming in through the window, I'm listening to the early morning calls of the exotic birds drifting in from outside, I've got a cup of freshly brewed Costa Rican coffee sitting on the bedside table next to me, my laptop sits on my lap as I type this blog post, and in another browser tab, I'm following the early football kick-off in the Premier League on the BBC sport website from back in England.  Later on, around 9am, I'll take a leisurely bike ride the mile or so down to work, where I'll spend most of the day sitting down at the hotel, chatting, surfing the web, maybe take a swim in the pool or ocean, and generally not do very much, since it's low season here, and there are not many guests around.  This is not exactly a taxing life.  Sure, when work gets busy, it can be full-on, long, physically and mentally demanding and tiring days, but the balance of that is the couple of hours or more I get to spend under the ocean, in my absolute element.  This is perhaps the life of which I always dreamed.

And that is the problem right there.  It is the life that I have always wanted.  I attained my dream, so I should be happy, because that is what I tell everyone else, that the path to true happiness lies in seeking out and attaining your dreams.  Am I now advocating that everything I spoke of before, that everything in which I have believed and gambled on, was nothing other than a falsehood, one of life's lies?  I have been happy.  Very happy. I still am.  I have no need to change where I am or what I am doing.  Diving under the ocean here, with a tank of air strapped to my back, my only means of survival, gives me the utmost pleasure.  Simply stated: I love it.  The vast array of life, from the smallest nudibranch to the graceful ease of a manta ray, the seasonal changes, the unpredictability of the ocean conditions, the chance to see some of the most incredible sights, these are the reasons why I love it.  My dream has been fulfilled.  It's time for a new one.

I have learned that I cannot stay still.  At first, I believed that the cause of my constant need for change was a lack of commitment to any one thing.  I tended to view this in a negative way, as if there was something wrong with me, that I had a phobia of commitment.  What I came to realise was that my heart has been ever urging me on, never letting me settle, driving me forward in search of each new adventure.  My heart is a wild beast and it is hard to tame.  And like all wild beasts, I believe that their rightful place is being free, to wander wherever their will takes them.  There are many things that I want to achieve in this life, many places that I wish to visit, many things that I wish to experience.  I have always known it.  As a young boy, I had a strong urge for adventure, that urge exists in my heart still.  I have to grow and learn, my heart demands it of me.  My whole life has been a series of progressions, of learning experiences, academically as well as psychologically.  I have to continue to do this, until my heart tells me it is time to stop, that at long last, we have found our home.

This is why I find myself at the fork in my path.  I have been looking for something new.  To step away from the path that I am on, to change my direction once more.  But I have felt a great reluctance to change.  At first, I firmly believed it was because none of my options were the right ones for me.  Good options, but not quite right.  Being heartstrong means that I have to feel it in my heart, or I am just nor there.  I could feel none of my options in my heart, and so I knew that I needed to wait a little longer and the right choice would present itself to me at the right moment.  And it did.  I wrote of my moment of epiphany last week in my post, Knowing The Path.  Yet, even after experiencing this moment, there was something that held me back and that confused me.  After the euphoria of my epiphany came some moments of doubt.  Was this truly right for me?

I began to think that the answer was no.  That the choice to go and travel again was not my true path.  Almost, I began to believe this to be my truth, that is, until I had to make the jump across the border to Nicaragua this past week, to renew by tourist visa for Costa Rica.  In the process of travelling on public buses, of watching life unfold before me, of seeing exotic places, of being in some place different, of needing to push myself to know which bus to take and when, walking across the no mans land between neighbouring countries.  All of these things fired up my desire for travel.  Just a moment ago, as I was typing an earlier paragraph, a picture came floating into my mind of a far off distant shore, and in that moment, my heart leapt with a great sense of joy.  I know that it is what I wish to do.

Even though I feel the truth of it in my heart, I am afraid.  You see, I like my life, I like being in Costa Rica, I like having the chance of meeting with a manta ray or a huge school of devil rays.  I like my fully furnished apartment which contains everything that I need.  I like my landlord and next door neighbour, with his super cute, little two year old daughter and his crazy dog called Manny.  I like that I can go into the grocery store and be greeted by the people that work there, because they know me.  I like that I can cycle down the road and see people who wave at me, cars that hoot to acknowledge me, as I wave back.  I like that I can pop down to the bakery, just one minute away and buy freshly baked bread for my lunch.  I understand how life works around here and I like that.  I feel safe and I feel secure in this existence.  I could stay and perhaps I would be content.  Perhaps I might be.  Why risk change and a voyage into the unknown?

I believe that it is this fear of change that prevents many people from achieving their true dreams.  As humans, we enjoy comfort and security.  After achieving the necessities of life - air, water, food, shelter - security and comfort are next.  After all, we have it drilled into us from our earliest days that we must work hard, so we can take out a mortgage to buy a house, so that we can save for our retirement, save for our medical insurance, we must surround ourselves with the trappings of modern life, with possessions that add to our sense of security and comfort.  Unfortunately, the truth is, that we are never as secure as we might believe.  No one is immortal.  No one is immune to illness, disease, or accidents.  No matter how secure you believe your job to be, it is not.  No employee is indispensable.  When a company needs to cut back in order to maintain solvency and profitability, it will do so ruthlessly, without mercy, and the axe can fall on anyone.  I've seen it happen, I've seen first hand how technological advancements affected the workplace.  I was an instigator of those changes, I had a role in affecting the lives of others in a negative way.  It always left a sour taste in my mouth.     

We cling on to all that we have attained because it provides us with a sense of security.  It is the attainment of that security that causes us to sacrifice the dreams of our heart, to forsake the true path in life, the one that would provide us with the greatest sense of happiness and joy.  In this, I am no different.  I too feel the pull of that voice that urges security.  It is a deeply rooted, primeval urge to create security in your life.  But there is a stronger voice that beats inside of me.  The voice of my heart.

My heart rules me.  Its voice is so strong to me, that I cannot avoid its urges.  I must forsake my comfortable life if I wish to follow its call.  My fear of change almost paralysed me.  It almost held me tightly in its grip, telling me that here, in the life I lead now, I am happy and that I possess all that I need.  My heart never ceased its constant reassurances.  My heart knew that it needed to wait only for the right time, when I stood in a moment of silence, to act, and it did.  These other paths that I might take, perhaps I will come back to them on a different day.  Perhaps then, they will be the right paths for me, paths that my heart urges me to pursue.  Until that day, I must follow my heart along our present course.  And that is a course that leads me away from my comfort and security and into the unknown.

If I do not risk change, then I will never grow.  Life is a learning process, I see it as the process of evolving the soul.  Change allows us to learn and to grow.  Taking yourself outside of your comfort zone demonstrates just how much you are capable of, how much we are all capable of, and that always comes as a surprise, it is so much more than you can possibly imagine.  If I stay here on this path, I might be happy, I might enjoy my comfort and security, but I know there will come a time when I will have missed my opportunity of discovery, of growth and of learning.  And rather than the fear of losing my comfort and security, that is my greatest fear in this life.  That is why I must continue to live the life that I do, until the moment when I finally discover my home in another soul.  Perhaps finally then, I will be able to rest.  But I don't think so.  Perhaps I can sum it all up best with the words of Lord Alfred Tennyson:-

"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

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Do You Believe In Signs?

The other day at work, I was talking with the hotel concierge in the lobby, when an elderly guest approached.  After he had finished speaking with the concierge, he turned to me and told me that he had thoroughly enjoyed watching me teach scuba diving the day before.  He told me that he thought I was a very good teacher, because I possessed the right qualities for it: knowledge and skills in my subject matter, enthusiasm, and patience.  We talked some more and he told me his name was John and that he was himself a teacher of many years standing.  I thanked him for his compliments and I told him that they meant a great deal to me, as I was thinking of going into teaching formally as a high school teacher.  What he said to me next was the sign for which I had been seeking.      

For many of us, making tough decisions is a difficult process.  I know that at times, despite everything that my heart is yelling at me, despite all of its urges, I feel completely unsure and afraid of the consequences, afraid of the unknown that lies down the particular path I am considering.  Even if I know and understand the logic and rationale behind the decision that must be taken, I still feel a deep sense of trepidation.  When this occurs, I feel the need to seek out something illogical, something mystical, something spiritual.  It is as though some primeval sense demands it of me.  I start to look for something that will show to me the rightness of the decision that I am going to make.  I begin the search for a sign.

A sign.  It shows us the way to go, it tells us the direction to take.  Without them, we would quickly become lost.  Imagine driving down the highway and not having any sign posts to show you which exit you needed to take.  You could guess and you might be right, but until you turned off and tried one of the exits, you would encounter uncertainty and doubt.  Life is like this too.  Throughout our lives, we are taught to read signs of all kinds.  A smile means that someone is happy, dark clouds gathering on the horizon means rain, a feeling of thirst means we are dehydrated.  To get through life, we need to know the signs, to be able to read them, and we need to be able react to them.

For sometime now, I have had the idea of becoming a teacher running through my mind.  To tell the truth, it's been there for many years as an idle thought, perhaps nothing more than a curiosity, since I was ten years old.  More recently, it has begun to turn into something more, it has started to grow wings.  This is an idea that keeps on coming back to me, time and time again, it seems like I cannot rid myself of it and it cannot rid itself of me.  If I were to go through with the idea, it would mean a significant life change and a commitment.  It would mean turning my back on my current life and turning instead to something completely new - a path that is unknown and dark to me.  I am afraid of this idea because of what it means, but at the same time, I also believe that it is something that I must do, something important for my life.  To help me with my decision, I have been on the look out for a sign to show me the right way.

The other day at the hotel, John came as the bearer of that sign.  In those words that he spoke to me, I knew the rightness of the path that lies ahead of me.  We cannot create the signs, they have to come to us of their own free will.  There are days when we are desperate to find the answer for which we urgently seek and we see nothing.  Those are the times when we feel as though we have been deserted and left to our own devices.  Sometimes that is a sign in itself.  There are certain decisions that can only be made between you and your heart.  There need not be any other external factor involved.  Other times, we look and we are rewarded.  I remember a time when I was alone in Malaysia.  I had just separated from my partner and travel partner and we had decided to go our own ways.  I was travelling back to the Perhentians Islands to continue my scuba diving education.  On the boat from the mainland across the South China Sea to the islands, I felt lonely, sad and afraid of what was happening.  I can remember looking over the side of the boat, towards the bow to watch the white water that sprayed up as the boat cut through the ocean.  There, in the spray I saw small rainbows, brilliant colours of arcing light that just hung there, motionless, as if they had been waiting for me.  It was the sign that the decision that I had taken was the right one, I felt a sense of peace sweep over me, and my heart felt at ease.

Sometimes we misread the signs, we see only those things that only exist in our own truth of a situation.  How many times have I made the mistake of believing that a girl I liked very much and was giving me lots of attention, was attracted to me?  I figure that because of the attention, this girl must really be in to me, so I decide to ask her for a date.  The reality is that she is only being her usual friendly self and is this way with everyone.  I misread the signs because I saw only what I wanted to see, not the reality and the real truth of the situation.  I am completely unable to read women - period.  They remain a complete enigma and a mystery to me, but that is for a different post.

A sign reinforces our point of view and helps us to feel more comfortable with our decision.  Whether we like it or not, humans have a deep need to establish a spiritual connection, to believe that something exists that is greater than ourselves.  We are part of this great mystery of life, we are part of the miracle.  Signs hep us because they meet our psychological need for reassurance, that a greater power is willing us to go in a certain direction, that we are being helped along our path.  Maybe none of this is correct.  Perhaps it is all too easy to make the pieces fit, to look back with hindsight and to make certain things become the truth.  Would my life have turned out exactly the same if I had not seen the rainbows that day?  Perhaps it would, perhaps it would not.  It really does not matter.  All that matters is that I believe that life places signs in front of us to help us, to guide us, to show us the way that we need to go.

The other day at the hotel, John was the bearer of my sign.  When I told him that I had long thought of becoming a school teacher and that I was now seriously considering the idea, his words held meaning for me.  "It is your calling", he said.  And you know something?  I truly believe that what he said is right.  John is an angel, a messenger that came to me, that spoke the words that my heart needed to hear.  I do believe in signs, do you? 

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