The Great Perhaps

So it would be easy to go into detail about how great these past few weeks have been with my family during Christmas, New Years with my close Peace Corps friends, and then a week with some Richmond friends. There hasn’t been one dull or upsetting moment. You could describe it as bliss. But as is the case with trips like this, it’s really tough to put into writing just how good things really were. You end up listing everything you’ve done, and you get so caught up in making sure you didn’t forget anything, and as a result the writing is dry and boring. It could look something like this:

My family and I went surfing, volcano boarding, and visited a pristine volcano crater lake. We ate great food at beautiful locations, and for desert released recently hatched turtles into the ocean. And yeah maybe my siblings and I stayed up to late one too many nights, and maybe had a little too much fun on a bar crawl through Leon. Or that we spent New Years front and center on stage at a party with new Israeli friends. And that the UR guys and I scaled an active volcano in Jurassic Park like conditions, and then spent four days on a surfing safari at a secret beach we had all to ourselves.

But rather than focus on the details of the events, I’d rather focus on the emotions that accompany them. I want to focus on what made the trip special. For me, what makes a trip and/or a party so memorable is the details. Scaling a volcano is great, and makes you sound awesome and unique when you tweet about it or post about yourself on facebook. And anyone can do it with a little sweat and effort. But for me, what made that adventure so special, were the smaller events along the way. Smaller events such as the joy and excited nature on my friends faces when they first felt the heat from the volcano, and the steam pouring from the cracks. Or going to help out a fallen friend, but instead sending a golf ball size rock into his head. Or even playing 20 questions on the way down, with the answer being a close friend of ours. (The answer being Dacey). Or just being surrounded by friends I hadn’t seen in months. While reaching the top was a great accomplishment, it was journey that made the trip so great, and it’s the journey and the present that you need to pay attention too.

As you may guess, I’m a couple months behind when it comes to technology and current trends. Recently online I’ve come across the hash tags (something I’ve also only just figured out) FOMO and YOLO which although new to me, I imagine are old for you. FOMO meaning “fear of missing out”, and YOLO meaning “you only live once”. I think I understand the sentiment behind them, but I can’t disagree more with their use. It seems like these acronyms are used as excuses to do something, for the benefit of other people. That is to say, the life of the users of FOMO and YOLO are dictated by what other people think. They go hike a rad trail to a beautiful mirador because they want others to know they were there, not because they were truly interested in it. And when this is the prime motivator for an adventure, the true nature and greatness of the adventure is lost, for the reason I mentioned above. It’s not the end goal and the photo that comes with it, but the journey to accomplish that end goal that makes it truly memorable.

So if you were even to use FOMO (and I don’t recommend it), it shouldn’t be used for fear of missing out on other concurrent or past opportunities, but for fear of missing out on living in the present, and taking advantage of the situation you are currently in. Looking back and regretting something doesn’t do you any good. By always looking towards something else, you’ll always diminish the importance and how great the present can be. And living like that will always leave you unsatisfied.

So I was going to wrap this blog up like that, but I thought of a book I just read*, or really two quotes in particular that reinforce the theme of this blog:

“You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you’ll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining the future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.”

and

“Francois Rabelais. He was a poet. And his last words were "I go to seek a Great Perhaps." That's why I'm going. So I don't have to wait until I die to start seeking a Great Perhaps.”

Being too focused on the future or distracted by what could’ve been will always pull you away from present, from the small details in life that make things that much better and memorable. Life is about being proactive and not waiting around for that Great Perhaps to stumble in front of you; you have to go out and look for it yourself, and explore the unknown. And this really hit home for me, now that I’m coming up on less than half a year in my service. I’ve been saying I want to do this, or go visit that before I leave, and have just been looking for “the right time”, but let’s be honest; there is no right time. Waiting for that right time – whether it’s when to enjoy that candy bar from the states or dig a well in site – only delays the inevitable, maybe indefinitely. The right time is when you decide you want something bad enough to just go do it. Or as a good friend reminded me after our first IST in Leon, “If you want something, just fucking do it, you know?” But just make sure you pay attention to the small things along the way!

*The book was Looking for Alaska by John Green

More to come these adventures from some guest bloggers!