One-Way Ticket for One!

Finally.

After months of deliberating, planning, researching, over-analyzing, questioning, reading, second-guessing, triple-guessing, driving my close friends nuts, (thanks for listening to my dozen or so versions of how this trip may unfold), and generally absorbing as much information as possible... my tickets are purchased. This trip is happening.

I just bought a one-way ticket to Thailand, and I am now... overjoyed, terrified, through-the-roof excited, overwhelmed, anxious and incredibly impatient... all at once.

The dream I've had for years of living in Thailand is going to be realized... I just have to wait exactly 190 days before my adventure begins. This is a dream that's been brewing since college... a solid ten years of me gazing at a photo of a Thai boat that first appeared in my college apartment. Ten years of collecting books on Buddhism... then yoga, Ayurveda, and meditation. Ten years of dreaming of exploring a beautiful part of the world that I've always felt inexplicably drawn to. More on why there's been so much waiting later... but for now this poem, hanging on my desk at work, reminds me why this journey that's about to unfold is so important:

For a New Beginning

In out-of-the way places of the heart,

Where your thoughts never think to wander,

This beginning has been quietly forming,

Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,

Feeling the Emptiness growing inside of you,

Noticing how you willed yourself on,

Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety

And the gray promises that sameness whispered,

Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,

Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,

And out you stepped onto new ground,

Your eyes young again with energy and dream,

A path of plentitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not clear

You can trust the promise of this opening;

Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning

That is at one with your life’s desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;

Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;

Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,

For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

-John O’Donohue

Love,
Katery