Accepting Experience

I'm back home now. It doesn't feel like home, though. I felt natural moving around the country, meeting new people and experiencing the altering landscapes. I watched the clouds closely, and marveled over maps for days.

Cross-country trips really can bring out either the best or the worst in people . Sometimes it’s a tricky balance between both. For me, it’s a tricky balance. I feel raw. I feel like all of my emotions are on my sleeve. I am exposed, and feel completely nomadic, no matter how populated the towns we pass through. I act more passionately, as if the only chance I have is in that specific moment.

Near the border of Nebraska, I watch the rolling plains. I keep my eyes peeled for every cow, horse, donkey, sheep or moving animal. They spark something - pity or amazement that these animals live in these landscapes, which were once the new frontier. I feel the electricity of the beauty of nature coursing through my finger tips, up my arms and to my heart. Simultaneously, my fists clench with anxiousness and nervousness, wondering many mistakes I can make or avoid.

Unfortunately, sometimes a negative experience or influence is a necessary jolt to help someone reach a certain level of understanding. Sometimes that level of understanding is simply acceptance. That’s what experience entails: it is not a war with circumstances or a constant evaluation through hindsight. Experience is acceptance and learning. Accepting that our vehicles can’t cross the passes we dreamed of a month prior, learning that natives have a completely different sense of difficulty rating than us. Experience is absorption of the present, and analysis of events and reactions, whether they are good or bad. We cannot judge the quality of our experience in the past or present, and we cannot foresee the quality of a future experience. All we can do is live, accept, and learn. When experience is judged, especially if it is critically judged within the moment, growth is stunted and memories are taunted or lost by negativity.

So if something goes wrong, it is just that. Just as if the same event had gone well. It’s a passing of time, a growth of the individual and group dynamic, without judgments, that allows the human mind to expand and perceive not only the vastness of society, but of our country, our countrymen, and our planet. Embracing the good and bad is an element of learning. If we continue to judge present, past or future situations, we are not moving forward, but rather becoming stagnant, forgetting humility, forgetting compassion, and limiting our abilities and learning experiences.

Especially when away from home, so much is out of our hands. We did not know the roads of Colorado would be so challenging. We did not know how difficult it would be to use the crew in an nontraditional sense, to multitask locations and people. All we know is we can act, decide, move forward, feed our bodies and minds, experience the roads and towns for what they have to offer, and hope that truth and enlightenment crosses our path.