I Actually Like Long Flights (Now)!

If you are a traveler, roamer, wanderer, or mover long enough, you are bound to endure a long, long, long flight. These long flights carry us across oceans and continents, taking us to new places, or returning us to old ones. And while they are a necessary evil in our traveling lives, they are probably one of the parts of the lifestyle we like the least.

I was blessed with the chance to have this experience not once, but twice, in a two-week period of time. One was to carry me home to California for the holidays, and one was to carry me home to Spain to resume my “normal life.” And I've got to say, that after the experiences I had, I am no longer one who falls under the category of “dreading this long flight” or “Man I really hate these things.”

My trip home involved one 11.5 hour flight from Madrid to Dallas, and one four hour flight from Dallas to San Francisco. On the long flight, I was seated next to a young guy from San Diego, who was flying home from his semester abroad in Madrid. He was such a sweet kid, and we alternated between watching the mediocre movies and shows they played for us, reading, coloring (me), and conversing about an array of life topics and California things. Neither of us slept a wink, which could have been a nightmare, but it was a really pleasant experience, and when the time came for us to take separate trams to our next flights, we parted with a hug and well wishes. I send him love and light, and hope he returns to the world again someday.

Surprisingly enough, I wasn't at all tired of travelling by the time I got to Dallas. But something changed by the time I got on the plane, and I couldn't have been more ready to finish the trip. Luckily, the three-seat row I was in had an empty middle seat, giving me some extra space. (Literally every traveler’s dream – that the seat(s) next to you will be empty. Even if the flight is only an hour long.) But even with this magical, extra space, I still couldn't sleep. Which was really, really frustrating, because by the time I landed in San Francisco, it was as though I had been up and flying all day and all night.

The journey coming back to Spain was an entirely different story. I was sleep deprived and sick, so if I wasn't making light small talk with my seat mates or eating, I was asleep in one of a variety of strange airplane sleeping positions. I flew the same route coming back – SF to Dallas, Dallas to Madrid – but the flights were all a little bit shorter on the route back. Instead of four hours, it was three and a half, and instead of 11.5, it was 9.5. Quite doable, especially when you’re passed out.

The flight from SF to Dallas was a touching one. I was seated next to a heavyset Guatemalan man and his 7-year old daughter. When they first sat down, my judgmental human instinct was, “Oh man. Not only will I now share the row with someone who doesn't quite fit in the seat, but he’s got a child with him.” But for some reason (thinking I'll thank my years of practice at being less judgmental, as well as my subconscious) I quickly pushed the concerned thoughts aside, and decided it would be just lovely. I had had a beautiful time at home, and couldn't be bothered with negative or judgmental thoughts. 

I heard them speaking Spanish, so I decided to brush off the old language skills and speak a bit with them. I actually got a bit nervous before I started speaking, since it had been a couple weeks since I'd spoken Spanish, and I felt a little rusty. But I braved it, and was really happy that I had! I found out he is a painter, and that he had taken his daughter on a vacation to the United States for the holidays, as they had just lost the mother a few weeks prior and needed to get away. It was all I could to do keep myself from wrapping my arms around his plump body and bringing his daughter to my heart for an embrace. I can’t imagine being 7-years old and losing my mom. I love my mom so insanely much, it pained me to know hers was now gone from her life. I was immediately glad I had remained open to the situation. 

I grew even happier that I hadn't let the initial, cruel, typical thoughts take control, when he asked me, quite nervously, if I knew which gate they needed to go to for their next flight. He was more than a little concerned, because they had less than forty minutes to get to the gate for their next flight home. The gratitude he projected on me had me sending up prayers of thanks that I made the decision to be loving and positive instead of full of dread and concern. (This may seem like a harsh way to say it, but let's be honest, aside from one of our favorite things ever being empty seats next to us, and long, long flights being our least, sitting next to children and/or larger people also tend to fall on our "not so favorite part of travelling" list.) But we were able to work it all out, get them the information they needed, determine they had more than enough time, and enjoyed a final tram ride together. It was another really blessed flight experience, and now that I think about that man and his child, I realize how blessed I was to be able to sit next to them on that flight. (Thank you, Lord, for placing me there with them.)

Then came the big baby, the long one, the here-we-go. I was still so tired when I got on the flight that would carry me back to Madrid, I didn't really care who I was next to. I hoped it would be no one, but when that wasn't the case, I was glad to realize I was again quite blessed to have a pleasant seatmate. I was seated next to a really nice Sevillan guy, who was flying back from visiting his girlfriend in Mexico. We spent some time talking, and upon asking how he and his girlfriend had met, he told me they had met online over two years prior. They started talking online, and then after some months, he had saved up enough money, and decided to go and meet her finally in person. They've been dating ever since. Oh, the things you learn about on airplanes! 

So overall, I had a really great travel experience. Which is great, because now I'm really not bothered by the thought of a long flight, and that's good, because I'll be enduring a lot of them over the course of my life! I have officially been converted into a real traveler! One who isn't phased by long flights, and actually kind of looks forward to them. 

Everything we do in life depends on our mentalities, and long flights are definitely not excluded from this! If we see something that triggers a "natural response," we can so easily shift it and switch the whole experience we're going to have to be something full of goodness and love! It's always worth trying, right? I'd certainly rather spend my days in love and light!

Hope that you all are having a really fantastic weekend, and that you're given the chance to overcome judgmental thoughts and have a blessed experience where there might have been a not-so-great one!

Blessings, Love & Light to you all, and goodnight! :-*

16 Things To Do in Five Years

When I sat down this morning for my devotional, I wanted to put down on paper all the grand plans I've been coming up with for my life. It started out as a list of things I'd like to do over the course of all my years, but after looking at the list, I realized they are all things I would like to, and could, accomplish in the next five years. In five years, I will be nearly 30-years old. I will be nearing the age I have decided (and also kind of promised my mom) would be appropriate to have a bit more of a career path in place, and perhaps have decided in which part of the world I will make my home. All of the things you are about to read are things I WILL accomplish in the next five years, apart from two.

16 Things To Do Before I'm 30:

• Learn Portuguese, Italian, French, German and Japanese
• Spend more than a month travelling Portugal (Checking this one off this summer!)
• Live in/travel Italy for three to four months
• Live in France for one year
• Return to the Baboon Sanctuary in Belize and volunteer
• Spend five months travelling Central America
• Go to the furthest tip of Africa
• Do yoga on the Great Wall of China
• Be a travel writer/inspirational person with a great reach (#1)
• Do a handstand
• Make my own bread and pasta
• Collaborate with a visionary artist to make psychedelic story books
• Write a novel
• Hear God's voice
• Ascend the chakras in meditation
• Grow my own food (Note to self: This requires finding a place to live and turn into a semi-permanent home)

The two things on this list that I have on my "General Life List" are to learn German and Japanese, but the rest, you follow along on this journey of mine long enough, and I will personally bring you along with me as I accomplish them!

I think it's important to set big and small goals for your life. I'm against planning out your life, but I am all for having ideas and a broad timeline in which to accomplish them. That said, what can you think of? What have you thought of? What's on your list? Anything special or simple you'd like to accomplish in the next year? Five years? Share below in the comments anything you might want to do, and we can make sure we encourage each other all the way to successful completion of everything! 

Blessings, Love & Light sweet souls 

<3

Letting Go

I think the hardest part in any relationship in our lives is the part in which we are faced with making the decision to let go. And let's be honest, it really is a decision that we are in charge of making. Because we can easily go throughout our days rethinking, reconsidering, and remembering, and usually, that's easier than deciding the time to stop it all is now.

Before I continue, I'll give a little background. And I'm going to hopefully assume that he never reads this, therefore giving me a little extra space to be a little extra honest.

My dinomate and I met at Snow Globe Music Festival, New Year's Eve, 2011. It was a meeting planned by the stars, to say the least. Our cosmos aligned, and it was our time. Our time to come face-to-face, heart-to-heart, and soul-to-soul. A close friend of mine said once that we were two wholes to the same whole, and it's true. We completed each other in ways only your true puzzle piece and counterpart can. It was magical, it was beautiful, it was soulful.

We spent all of 2012 together, making it not only my most meaningful relationship, but my longest. We lived together for a while, took care of each other in ways that takes the meaning of "care for one another" to all new depths, and loved each other without bounds. We could spend all day together doing nothing, but be having the best time. And we could turn any regular task into a big, imaginative adventure. But our time together was cut short when I found out I was accepted to come to Spain as a teaching assistant, and accepted.

Now some, himself and myself included, might take my acceptance to move to another continent as a sign that I didn't care about us, love him, or want the relationship, and trust me, I've spent a lot of time crying over that. But when I really think about it now, I think it has always been a sign of my trust and belief in our relationship, and the phrase, "if it's meant to happen, it will." My moving away wasn't a demonstration of my feelings, but proof in how much I believed in our destiny to be together. Which is why, a year after our parting (more like four-ish months if you consider how together we still acted for the first seven months of my life abroad), it is still so hard for me to write this, and so impossible for me to have decided it's time to let go and move on.

I went back to Snow Globe this year. He wasn't there. I even ended up going, unbelievably, to the same house the group had rented the year we all went, the house in which we met and our story began. The circle came fuuuull circle this year at Snow Globe. I think it had to, that I needed it to. If I'm being honest, I am pretty sure I went to the festival thinking that things would be the same as they were that first year -- he'd be there, I'd be there, we'd all be there, and we'd see each other, and just know, know that we're the piece to each other's puzzle, and that no distance or amount of time could ever change that. But it didn't happen that way. And I decided that now it's time to let go.

Aside from deciding to move to Spain, this is the hardest thing I think I've ever had to do in my life. It means giving up on the one person I thought I would always fight for, choosing to abandon my heart, and deciding to really walk away.

How do you decide to let go of the person that your soul seems to have selected? How do you tell yourself it's time to move on from your best and favorite friend? How do you not spend time wondering, "what if..."?

I'll tell you how:

You just do it. You make it happen.

You apply that same faith you applied to your relationship to the moving on from it. The same belief in your relationship together, in the universe and God and their ways with the world. And the same trust that you're meant to be, in knowing that if you are, you will be, and nothing can ever stop that.

There is no way of knowing this way or that in this life, and we could certainly kill ourselves thinking that way. Lord knows many have. But that is no way to live when there's a great big world out there just waiting to be touched and explored. And that is no way to live if you trust God and the universe the way you claim to!

So as I pass into 2014, I open myself up to all that is to come; I release myself from all that is already done; and I decide that it is time to let go, knowing that everything is perfect as it is, and nothing can ever turn out any way other than how it's supposed to. It may be hard, and there will most certainly be tears, but it's time. It's time to let go.

Sending strength to all those who need it right now, and wishing you well on the first days of this beautiful new year! 2014 is going to be another good one!

Blessings, Love & Light