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JFK to MAD

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I just bought a one-way ticket to Spain. It’s not the first one-way ticket I’ve ever bought, but it’s the biggest. When I explain to people what I am doing, this little bit of information is the bit that gets the point across. The point being that I am really going, by myself, to foreign lands, with no return date. More often than not, the explanation of my plan (which is a term used VERY loosely) is met with joy and curiosity.
In the light of my impending departure, I have been reflecting on my life and what it is that has brought me to this pivotal point in my life. At an age where most of my peers are married with children, I seemed to have dodged most typical responsibilities, other than the responsibility to my own self, my own happiness and my own freedom. This isn’t something that just happened to me, I have spent the last 5 years of my life fiercely cultivating my independence, my self-reliance and my personal sense of freedom. I have made a commitment to move through fears, and break the boundaries of societal expectations that had, in the past, been holding me back from truly living my dream.
Personal freedom is a topic that very much interests me. As a practitioner of yoga and meditation, I know that the word ‘freedom’ is a conception with room for interpretation, rather than a concrete notion. To view personal freedom as a state of mind might implicate that we have the choice to view our lives as a prison, and actively participate as a prisoner, and conversely, have the choice to view our lives as a world of infinite possibilities, and actively pursue this freedom.
Although, I do not believe that personal freedom and conventional American life are mutually exclusive, I do realize that I am in a very unique position to be able to do what I am doing. Most often, people tell me that I am taking “ the trip of a lifetime.” I do not take this for granted. I have come to realize, that because I have chosen to share my journey with others (via this blog), my responsibility to live life to the fullest and to savor every moment is that much greater. I would like to think that I am not traveling on some whimsical, frivolous self-indulgence, but rather traveling for the ones who may not have the practical freedoms I have been blessed with. I am now traveling for those of you who are deeply imbedded in family life, those of you who may be stuck in the grind right now, and those of you that might be ill or infirmed.
It is my wish that my journey might ignite a sense of freedom in your own heart, and that you may find a little inspiration to make a leap in your own life. To find a reason to break the chains, or to release the fears of the mind that may be holding you back from taking your own “trip of a lifetime”, even if that is simply a journey deeper into your truth, to define your own sense of personal freedom.

“When the body is released from the shackles of disease, and when the mind is free from the shackles of fears, then the intellect is ever alert, ever active. In this activity alone, there is creativity. In this creativity alone there is freedom. In this freedom alone, there is precision. In this precision alone, there is God. All that is truth.”
-BKS Iyengar

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