June 30 was the two-month anniversary of leaving Los Angeles on my full-time RV journey. I want to share three insights I am having which might resonate with others.
~ I am experiencing the passage of time differently ~
One of the reasons I overhauled my life is that I felt like time was slipping away too quickly. I constantly wondered where this month or season or year went, and I couldn’t tell anymore whether something happened three years ago or five years ago.
I don’t know if I will always keep up this pace, but I definitely feel like the last two months have been dense with experience. I have followed my curiosity and my heart to so many places and people, and have been so present in appreciation of all of it – that April 30 feels like a long, long time ago.
~ I am more in synch with the rhythm of nature ~
~ I am less in my head and more in my heart and my body ~
Instead of the punishing schedule of modern mainstream American life, what I do in a day is on a more human scale. I sleep until I wake up, and take naps when I feel the need. The arc of my day depends significantly on the presence of light between dawn and dusk. I spend less time in temperature-controlled environments, so I feel hot and feel cold. I have been very conscious of the cycle of Spring, and am feeling the seasonal turn into Summer.
And I am actually in nature itself so much more. I see it, hear it, feel it, smell it. It is powerful and delicate, enduring and fragile, beautiful and yucky. I am present to the interrelatedness of the ecosystem, and the cycle of life in it. It is fascinatingly complex and perfect, and I feel more and more like a creature living as part of it. I love nature more because I spend the time with her in awe. And I find myself loving me more for being part of something that is so worthy of awe.
~ I feel more free to become my best self ~
In my former life, there was a particular external force at play to keep me small. That force expressed itself frequently in criticism and control.
And the rest, I did to myself.
I managed the cognitive dissonance as best I could with some combination of justification, resistance, hope, compartmentalization, creativity, avoidance, perseverance, distraction and trying to extract answers and/or motivation out of self-recrimination. I did, in fact, accomplish great things, but lived with a constant fear of backlash, so I always held back and hid a little.
That external force is no longer in my life, and I am now just present with my own internal habitual process of holding back that was somehow meant to protect me. It’s less reflexive than it was, and less intense. I feel more space, more freedom, more assurance. I don’t want to just hope the evolution will continue, but I can’t force it to, either. The best I can chararcterize the process of infusing it with gentle focus is that I am glowing it brighter, or gently allowing its butterfly wings to emerge from a chrysalis of fear.
It is the key to everything.
