Take The Road Less Travelled By – Porto Part 6/6 {Travel Journal}

My last hours in Portugal.  For a long time, I take a long look at the countryside, and with it a deep breath, I inhale.  I stop.  The air tastes different than usual.

It is funny how travelling sometimes teaches you things you did not even know you do not know.

The last days have been for me more of an emotional rollercoaster than usual.

The endless valley in front of me is not giving a flying f*ck about my emotions, my problems, about me.  About you neither.

So, I take a step back and evaluate the seriousness of the problems that we lose our mind over and over regularly.

Our collective b*tchism about money, whether or not we are liked enough, what other people think of us, if we are deserving of what life has to offer, or if we are on the right path.

By vagabonding around the world, you also learn that you do not matter in a good way.  The world was here long before you and will be here long after you.

So, Why So Serious?

I know the fact that you feel sad or happy or anxious is important.  But is it really?

After I received some bad news that this week, I felt like somebody shat all over my face.  That the entire world was going to end.

That it matters.  That the nature of my problems is so severe that it will disrupt the balance of the freakin universe.

That everybody will hate me and that life is going to end.

At the end of my feelings, however, was nothing.  Which made me realise that, more often than not, feelings really are a bad indicator for what we should do.

What really helped me to liberate myself from my recent outbreak of bi*tchism was the realisation that people really do not care about me as much as I think.

In a good way.  Nihilism can be a relief.

Everybody thinks about themselves.  Everybody has an entire world between their ears that is just as complex as your own.

Maybe I am less alone than I thought.

Maybe we are all crazy.

Maybe sanity is a lie, and planet earth is the universes biggest psychiatric facility.

Or maybe it is just me.  I do not know.

In my time in Portugal, I learned some lessons that I would not have expected.

As I stare into the abyss in front of me, I touch my heart, and I wonder, what feelings come up when I think of the word I?

I want to ask you to think of when you think of the word myself, what do you feel?

Who Am I?  What Person Am I Inventing Right Now?  And Why?

I experienced a lot of emotions during my last days in Portugal.

I felt true friendship and loyalty as my friends showed me that I can count on them.

I felt adventure when I stumbled drunk through the streets of Porto at night.

I felt vividness when I climbed through the mountains of the Braga district and jumped headfirst into the sweet water lagoon near Cascada de Tahiti.

I felt stillness and harmony when I watched the sun go down in Guimares while I punched letters into my keyboard.

Maybe my homesickness for places that I have never been to will never seize to exist.

I am fine with that.

On my journey, one country at a time, my mind is changing.  My heart pumps louder.  With each time I fly through the air, I look back at my life and evaluate what I like, and what I hate.

With each trip, I somehow gain more and more confidence.  A belief that eventually, I will get better along the way.

And step by step, trip by trip, I create a custom-made life for myself.

Something we all should do.

Something you should do.

Write your own laws.  Create your own moral.  Do you.  Be stupid.  Fly across the world with no money.  Kiss a girl you will never see again.  Have a fight with someone stronger than you.  Drink wine straight out of the bottle.  Tell all your friends that you are afraid.  Go to Tibet.  Fail spectacularly.

Only going through the confusion, failure, and raw life will you discover what you want, and more importantly, what you do not want.

Take The Road Less Travelled

A special friend of mine dropped by for a few days at our villa in Portugal.  He very recently quit his 9-5 job to leave Germany with his girlfriend and to live out of his car in Scotland where he is vagabonding right now.

And, he explained to me the beauties of exploring things for yourself.  And only for yourself.

How much more value there is if you ignore Trip Advisor and go off on your own.

And wonder if this is true for life also.

To invent yourself, you need to leave your nest.

Break out.  Ignore the common paths, ignore what your parents wanted for you, what society thinks you should become, be stupid, and create a path for yourself.

Maybe we all should ignore what other people do, and set out into our own little custom-made adventure.

If you are reading this, and you were thinking about setting out in the pursuit of a dream of yours, do it.  You only have a fixed number of heartbeats.  Do not waste them.  No matter how weird you think you are going to look, do it.

At a certain point in life, you have to let it all go and do not care what it is going to look like.  If you belong to the fortunate and you found the hole in your psyche, a golden path to your dream, where at the end is an elusive, mysterious something that you craved for far too long, do it.

This is what I realised in the very last hours of my Portugal trip, is that I am ready to go into the abyss.  I am ready to pay whatever.

Following my dream of becoming a nomadic psychologist was the easiest decision of my life.  Not the wisest maybe, but something irreversible.

So for now, I am done with fear.

As long as I have the people I love, my orange backpack, my blog, and my dream, I have everything that I need.

That is it.

Thanks for reading.