Wanderlust

How to know when it’s time to move on? How are we prompted to get up and go?

I watch the many animal migrations and wonder, what tells whales to start swimming, the wildebeest to start walking, the geese to fly into the sun?

The journey is never easy; indeed it’s fraught with hardship and the prospect of death. Only the strongest usually survive yet nature finds its way to complete the circle. Life moves on.

Is it the same with men? Most of us may have wandered away from our nomadic past, living in a digital world that seems to be shrinking by the nanosecond. We may not be driven by the waxing and waning of the seasons; or the rains; or our instinct to breed, but an inescapable truth still binds our existence…constant change.

Here’s where our delusion of sameness comes into play; a comfortable reality we weave that binds the way we see things. While we perceive everything around us to be the same; we turn a blind eye to everything that’s not.

Change we are; How are we changing? Where are we changing to? Absent the need to traverse the Serengeti our journey is inwards. Understanding how we function; what drives us and moving towards that state; should that be our migration?

Erich Fromm said “Let your mind start a journey through a strange new world. Leave all thoughts of the world you knew before. Let you soul take you where you long to be…Close you eyes let your spirit start to soar, and you’ll live as you’ve never lived before.”

I’m suddenly tempted to follow this wanderlust into who I am. Like the road less traveled; I meet it head on.