Hi. Happy last day of February! Even with the special bonus day, February seemed to cruise along a lot faster than January did, right?? We are one sixth of the way through 2024. How is it going for you?
I’m exhausted, and yet exhilarated and rejuvenated, all at the same time. That’s typically my experience with travel. There are very few experiences that deplete you and energize you, all at the same time. Giving birth and perhaps running a marathon (although I wouldn’t know anything about long distance running. I won’t run to my mailbox) are the only other experiences that I can think of, off the top of my head, that could fall into this same category. I suppose winning an Olympic medal would be the extreme example of instantaneous exhilaration and exhaustion, but again, that is way out of my level of expertise.
When you add new experiences to your life, you add new layers to yourself. And some of your other layers get sort of reorganized with perspective changes, as new information gets assimilated into your being. Travel changes you. Travel expands you. I rode in a helicopter for the first time in my life this past week. My late uncle and my sister-in-law were military helicopter pilots and they always spoke so fondly of the specialness of flying in helicopters. I totally get it now. It was incredibly thrilling. It was an experience that I won’t soon forget.
Give yourself new experiences every day. You don’t have to travel far to try a new coffee flavor, drive a new way to work or to school, talk to someone whom you have never met, read a book that isn’t your usual genre choice . . . . The expansion of yourself from your experiences is really the point of “it all”, isn’t it? At the very least, expanding yourself is deliciously exhausting and invigorating, all at the same time.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:
1547. What gives you zest for life?