When I get news that someone is ill or has died or is facing some other kind of suffering it usually sends me into that emotional quicksand from my own difficult moments in life. Watching other people suffering is almost more painful for me than my own experiences with pain, probably because it feels like a bandage being ripped off before the healing has finished . Some suffering comes with warnings, some occurs in a tragic and unexpected way. The outcome for most of us is a paralysis that can be devastatingly difficult to overcome.
For me, when people close to me are faced with difficult life events I can’t help but think that everything I do or have been doing is a bunch of egotistical bullshit. Who wants to share photos of jewelry or get excited by thoughts of travel when you know that people you care about are in such a different reality. It sucks. It also is like a giant billboard in your face reminding you to slow down and be in the moments because none of us know what life has in store for us. The important tasks of our day suddenly seem like pathetic wastes of time.
But if you can harness a bit of the anger, sadness, frustration and raw emotion we all experience in these moments, it can serve as a reminder that what we DO is less important that what we feel. So on that note, The Anatomy of Travel Part IIII will not be about travel this week. Instead I wanted to use this little blog as a quiet reminder to take time with the ones you love, say the things you feel, let go of the urgency of doing more, being more, seeing more, and let yourself take time to rest, reconnect with the people you care about and remember that things we think are important today can often be distractions from what we really want to be feeling but have forgotten how because we’ve been too busy doing.
