I look back through my tear-stained eyes for once last blurred glimpse of my parents. A fumble through ticketing and security lead me to a long, dimly lit passageway of seemingly infinite moving sidewalks. A glowing dome surrounds the chamber and the tiny lights that occupy my field of vision change form and hue in time with ambient music. My world is violet, it is blue, it is green, it is golden. People rush past me, but I continue to breathe slowly as I glide through the tunnel, so as not to disturb this stage of my journey. I think about where I am coming from and where I am going. The transition is fleeting, but the emotional response remains within me: I am free from both here and there.
My sister runs marathons. She once tried to explain, “I feel like me when I’m running. I run and I get a pure sense of myself. Without it, I don’t know who I am.” She adds, “You probably don’t understand.” “I get the same feeling from quitting things,” I tell her. She laughs it off, but I am serious. It’s the freedom after my last day of work, or the moment when everything I own is packed in a car, or the realization that I can flow through borders and time zones with ease, that make me understand the perpetuity of my existence. Those in-between moments, those times of metamorphoses during which I’ve renounced my commitments and face an endless world of opportunity, give me a true awareness of myself and of life’s potential.
An escalator whisks me out of the tunnel and delivers me to a gate of departure. I move through the walkway that connects a building at rest to a vehicle in preparation for movement. As I slide into a window seat and murmur casualties to my neighbor, an omnipotent voice cuts in, “If you think you’re on your way to San Jose, California, please get off this plane.” The flight attendant continues, “…because we are headed to San Jose, Costa Rica.” Passengers cheer. An hour later, looking out over a marshmallowed dawn, I attempt to fill the first page of a blank journal that will, in the future, be an account of the past. My idea is to make a list of expectations, of goals, and of things I’d like to change and challenge throughout this next stage of my life. Then I pause. I close the notebook, sip slowly from a tiny bottle of Merlot and take in the white noise. Through yoga and meditation, we are often reminded to relax and to breathe, that there is nowhere to go and nothing to do, when really, we could argue the opposite; We have everywhere to go and everything to do.
I land safely on earth, clear customs, exchange currency and arrange transportation, relieved by the knowledge that this period of motion renders me invulnerable to everyday decisions. Gazing out of a bus window at a metropolitan wilderness that is both foreign and oddly familiar, I am aware once again that freedom is not something to be contained in a place or in an experience because it radiates from within every place and every experience. As we drift out of the city and into the mountains, I take an intermission from my thoughts to appreciate the present moment. It’s times like these that weave places and experiences into the stories that make up our lives. The jungle lies ahead, but for now, I am at peace.
About the Author: Rachel tends to relocate every few months, likely as an attempt to compensate for her suburban upbringing in Toledo, Ohio. Throughout the past ten years, her path has led her from business school in Scandinavia to yoga school in Guatemala, and has always included plenty of nature, couchsurfing and specialty coffee. She is currently residing in Colombia.
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