Swimming With Dolphins in Utila

Costa Rica Whitewater Rafting

Landscape of Awareness

“We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness and call that handful of sand the world.” –Robert M. Persig.

This quote struck me as a good opening to my travels.  My curiosity and unwillingness to settle has always gotten the best of me, for better or for worse. Quitting my job to travel the world is no small endeavor.  I however, was unwilling to settle for mediocrity.  I think a lot of us can relate to this, but we feel trapped by barriers.  Barriers that may be real or could be part of the momentum of our lives. In my situation, I could continue to work at an unrewarding and unfulfilling job with the comfort of a good paycheck and an ever increasing 401k balance, but found myself sitting at my desk thinking about everything else that I could be doing with my life.  I decided I was ultimately wasting my time and time is the most valuable resource we have.  I simply could not settle for standing still while the days and opportunities to live a dream of mine were passing me by. 

There are many types of risks that you can take in life. Some risks are the sort that if they don’t work out, you will still never regret taking them.  On the flip side, some risks if never taken, you could regret for the rest of your life. When I have told people about what I am doing, the response is usually, “That’s crazy,” or “I wish I could do that.”  Such as with most things, the ability to accomplish something is a matter of priorities and hard work.  Everyone has the same 24 hours in the day to do with what they choose.  If anyone has ever told you they did not have time to do something, what they are really saying is that something is not a priority for them.  My travels are my way of not only living a lifelong dream of mine, but it is also my way of making it a priority to increase my own "landscape of awareness.”

My love for philosophy has had a big influence on questioning and experiencing as much as I can in my life.  In this way I think Plato’s line about politics can be revised to apply to life rather than politics alone. Plato said, “The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”   I would revise this to say “The price we pay for indifference to the important questions in life, is to live a life according to the standards of our inferiors.” In this same way we can ask, Who has taught us what it means to live a good life?  Who has taught us what we should value during the short time we are here? If we never actively participate in learning and experiencing the world for ourselves, thinking about what we value and what it means to live a good life, we run the chance of living our lives by the standards of our inferiors.  Our indifference's to going through our lives of comfort, have left most of us living our lives by the standards of our inferiors.  The question on how we should spend our lives is a question on which we cannot afford to settle.    

“How much of everything that exists are we aware of? From all of this awareness we must select what we pay attention to and we call this consciousness.  Consciousness is never the same as awareness because the process of selecting what we pay attention to and what we experience mutates our reality.” - Robert M. Persig

I ask myself, "What am I aware of?" “How big is the handful of sand I have accumulated and with what sand have I filled it with?”  I intend to have a good answer for this question.