From Neil with love

My brother Neil wrote me:

“Hi Mark, I love reading of your adventures and am envious as I have had many of my own having traveled to more than thirty countries and lived in several from six months to a year. I was one of the few travelers to be more interested in the locals than other travelers and as a result have had many adventures from funerals, to weddings to parties based on the dreams of elders. Parties that would go on for three weeks. It was always an interesting experience and filled me with much joy. Ah the gifts of life.”

As I read his envious words and also began to wonder about his crazy adventures, another thought came into my head.  While I have been only recently writing a BLOG of my adventures in India, I think I have been living my life so that all of what I do is an adventure, or misadventure as the case often is. The only difference now is that I’m writing about it.  But while I lived on the West coast of British Columbia, I had many adventures every week from learning how to SCUBA dive, sailing around the Pacific islands learning to sail, climbing the various mountains nearby, playing music with many people and groups, dining out for new foods, driving snow covered roads in the mountains with no snow tires, camping out in those snowy hills, kayaking the coast both alone and with others, discovering and working with new people and discovering new materials, systems and processes, and so on.  Isn’t this the way for all of us, except we sometimes forget that we are on an adventure?!  Einstein said that he loved to travel, but hated to arrive.  Maybe that’s the secret, keep everything in the moment of wondrousness, new and fresh.  Or as my old mentor said: Be Here Now Remember.

 

Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other. – Dalai Lama