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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My Crazy Life of Dreams

There are some words that you never think you'd find yourself saying.  Some years ago, in Brussels airport, I remarked to a colleague that I couldn't wait to get back home to Budapest.  Those words came straight out with out a second thought, without a moment's hesitation, and it was to mark a significant shift in the way that I saw my life.  Now, some years later, living a very different life, I found myself sitting here in Costa Rica, casually telling a friend that I was heading up to Nicaragua, to renew my tourist visa the next morning.  My life, my crazy life and everything in between.

I always had dreams.  I don't know when they began or how they began, but that really is not important.  All that is important, is that they did begin.  They were not grand dreams, there was no master plan, there was no specific journey that I wished to make, there was nothing that I wished to accomplish.  I was just a boy who gazed out of the car window, who saw mountains, hills, valleys, water cascading down the side of the mountains after a rainfall, forming itself into babbling streams, and I knew that I wanted to be out there, I wished to walk amongst the nature, to be out of doors, a wanderer perhaps, but something more, something much more, an adventurer.

In one of those quirks of fate, I found myself as a ten year old boy, in the classroom of Mr Noon, my year six teacher.  Had my parents not decided to move to the south of England, I would have been sitting in a different chair, a different room, a different teacher.  On the side wall of the classroom, stacked in random order on some shelves, were some tattered, well read, old paperbacks.  Each week, we were allotted reading times and were required to select one of the books and to sit quietly and read to ourselves.  I began with Biggles adventures, following the exploits of the daring World War I fighter ace.  Perhaps I read something after, I do not recall now, and then I picked up one of the books that would change my life.  I pulled it at random and as it slid out from the bookcase, its back cover was facing me.  I turned it over to see a picture of mountains and its title: The Hobbit.

I had no idea what this story was about, but I began to read nonetheless and as I did, I found myself utterly transported into another world, a world that, even though I never knew of its existence before that time, I wanted desperately to find.  Bilbo Baggins is a reluctant hero who seeks out the comforts of home, who revels in them in fact.  When the chance of adventure comes literally knocking on his door, he is afraid of change, he is risk adverse, preferring to stay in the confines of his own world, the one that he knows, that he understands, and that is safe.  Here was something that instinctively I found myself saying, "I would go!", "Oh, for the chance!"  I longed for Gandalf to come knocking on my door.  It was impossible of course.  As I read of the adventures of Bilbo and his companions, I longed for the mountains, for the passes, to see valleys and great forests, to become lost, to fight for a greater cause.  My fires were ignited, yet they would slumber for many more years before I would begin to realise my own dreams and for adventure to come knocking on my door.

JRR Tolkien awoke something inside of me.  His writing, his stories, they created in me the adventurous spirit. But wait a minute.  Did he really, or did that already exist?  Hadn't my mother already been a key factor in that, taking my brother and I off on crazy late night car journeys, spontaneously jumping up to give chase to the sirens of an fire engine, so that we could investigate the goings on, taking me for walks in the woods with the dogs, across the fields, filling my head and my heart with the beauty of the out doors?  In my mother I had a kindred spirit that also sought out excitement and adventure.  Perhaps it is more accurate to say that Tolkien fanned the embers of a fire that was already there, it was already in my heart and in the blood that I inherited.  Those embers smouldered away just waiting for the right moment to leap up and burn bright.  A fire that was born in the very fibre of my being, and a fire that would eventually consume my heart, and become my life.

Dreams do not need to be big, nor do they need to be significant.  In fact, a dream can be anything that you choose it to be.  Let me rephrase that because this is important: you do not choose your dreams, they choose you.  A dream is anything that fires your heart with passion and desire, one that fuels the imagination and lets it run wild and free.  You know it, because when you think of it, you erupt in a spontaneous smile and a joy that flows from your inner being.  One of my own dreams was nothing more than a desire for adventure.  I didn't know where I was going to go, I didn't know when, nor did I know how I was ever going to achieve it.  I held that dream as a young boy, gazing out of the car window as we drove through the mountains of Scotland.  I yearned to lose myself amongst the mountains, to climb their lofty peaks, to travel the passes between them, and to be out in the wild. 

I think this is also a very important point to make.  A dream does not need to be a complete story, whereby you can see all the way through to the end.  A dream can begin with the first step and nothing more.  I decided to go travelling.  That was all I had.  What happened after was beyond my wildest imaginings and in no way, could I ever have imagined it.  However foolish your own dream may seem, it is not.  It is your dream and as such, it is your true calling.  To not begin it, is to deny yourself the purest form of happiness and the ultimate gift that you can ever bestow upon yourself - the love of self.

I am still in my dream and I never wish to see it end.  My dream is my life, my life is my dream.  They are one and the same thing.  I could never have foreseen this.  I do not know what will come next, I do not know where life is going to take me.  I try not to plan too far in advance, since I wish to live as much as possible in the present moment.  Life will take care of me, as long as I follow my heart.  That is what I have learned on my own particular journey.  Your heart knows what is best for you, it will never lead you astray, it will never betray you.  I know that if I have the opportunity for a new adventure, then I will take it, I will seek to suck out the marrow of life, to take the road less travelled, and to continue to live as deliberately as possible.  The words carpe diem are tattooed on my left arm for a reason.  I live by them.

It's a funny thing this thinking business.  I just had to stop and let a thought run its course, a thought that produced a big smile on my face, and that originated in my heart.  I realised that my quest for adventure will never end.  What will cease is my quest for travel and for the constant change that I continually put myself through.  At some point, I will have had my fill of that type of adventure and I will seek out a different one.  You see, one of my other dreams is the dream of fatherhood, which is perhaps the biggest adventure of them all.  And that is the one adventure I never want to miss.  The one adventure I must not miss.  The one adventure I will not miss.

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