The curves the trip take

So here I am sitting in Valparaiso, in a living room that has become ours over the past week, in a house that has been generously lent to us by our friend Cristian. Here I am sitting with my lap top on my lap, writing email and messages to my friends spread around the world asking for ideas and advices of where to go next.

Here I am sitting with the almos existential question of what to do, in a ocean of possibilities. Bolivia? Peru? Where in Bolivia? Which bus to take? How much will it cost to stay there? What is it that I am needing the most now? What is the place and what are the conditions that can best nurture me now?

After having journeyed for 4 months, I am sitting with the need to actually be still and be living a rhythmic life, where you know where you are going to wake up the next morning, and the morning after, and the morning after. In fact I am feeling lost... With no sense of purpose any more... With no sense of enchantement and discovery, as if everything that is there to see I have already seen. Maybe not exactly the same place with the same colors and taste, but yes, something quite similar... And so I am asking myself, what is it that this journey is really asking for me to be, and to become?

Recently we were seriously talking about going back to Holland earlier than planned, as we felt a urge to be settled and start building on the ideas we are having here. And so we made a whole plan so we would be back beginning of May, instead of beginning of June. All was set and decided, we felt clear and happy about having a clear plan. Minutes later we call AirFrance to find out our ticket is not changeable! Yes, life was telling us it is not yet time to go... But then what? What is the plan, then? 

We were feeling that Bolivia and Peru would be a whole other chapter to go into, and somehow were willing to skip that for now. Bang! We are told, that in fact we can't... and we are subtly invited to think it through again, to reopen ourselves to another possibility behind the ones we were being able to see then. And that is when we say to ourselves: " It seems like we have to stay, and make the most of it. Maybe there is in fact something we are live there that will make it worth it."

The curve has taken us somewhere new, it has invited us to be open and to keep opening up, even when    you feel it is time to close. And now within this open closure, as we start to close the journey (we only have 1 month left) we are find it important to be clear. And that for me, goes beyond the schedule, the dates and the places to go, it has to do with being clear to what we want to live. To somehow be able to sense what is the next learning we need to have, being able to anticipate it and make ourselves ready to when it comes.