I have been picking up biking again lately. Not like Freddy Adams biking but more like normal people biking. I bike over to Palm Beach island and bike along the beach for about 6 miles till the island stops at the this dock that I like to jump off of. One the way back I like to stop at some random part of the beach and swim a little. It's nice because no one goes to the beach up there (mostly because it's all private beach stuff) and it's really relaxing, and really energizes me for the day.
As I was riding today I thought back to my freshman year when I walked 30 miles to church. If you don't know the story this next paragraph is for you, if you do, skip that paragraph and i'll meet you down there.
One of my friends Matt Von Herbulis, who is a brilliant man, and an avid adventurer and lover of life, decided that he wanted to walk from Orlando, where he is from, to West Palm Beach to school at the end of winter break. He wanted to do this because Matt has a heart of gold and loves homeless people and wants to relate to them and experience God in a way many Americans don't understand. Well, just like anything else, he needed practice. At the time, him and I were going to a church in Boca Raton, just about 30 miles south of West Palm. So him and I decided that he would practice by leaving for church Saturday night and get there Sunday afternoon, and we could practice our street skills along the way. We left around 8 p.m. and walked until about 10 and then tried to find a place to sleep. We ended up sleeping next to a coin laundry and barely slept that night, due to other homeless people walking around, police sirens and being next to a busy street. The next day it was a billion degrees, or so it felt in my corduroy pants (terrible idea by the way) but we made it to the church around 3 p.m. after getting up at 6 a.m., exhausted and sunburned.
And were back. Well, one of the lessons I learned on that trip, besides walking in corduroy will chaff like no ones business and is a bad choice all around in Florida, is that when you slow life down, you get to catch a lot of things that you can learn from. As we walked along Dixie Hwy we discovered little things along the way, whether they be restaurants, funny signs, or cool murals. We had somehow found out how to slow down life, and enjoy it where we were. It was a bizarre feeling driving home and before I could point out that that was the coin laundry where we slept all night, it was gone. People were looking over their shoulder and squinting trying to see it as we drove by at 40 mph.
I feel like that is how we treat life. I know I have said it before but I feel this pressure from people and society ever time they ask what I want to do after I graduate. It is almost as if they are pushing me into my career and trying to get me right into the grind of "normal American life" and want me to be focused on what I'm going to do and what I want to accomplish and what kind of job I want and how much money I want to make and where I see myself in five years and....... What I really want to tell them is to just take it easy, relax, it'll be just fine. I want to focus on where I am right now, not where I'm going or what I will do. It's that kind of thinking that made me discontent with where I was. I become discontent and wasn't thankful for what was around me.
The heart of discontentment is a lack of thankfulness. This was my lesson this summer and me slowing down life. Enjoying life in the moment and the little things has been that lesson in action. I have been discontent because I just want to go outside and climb mountains and boulder and hike in the woods and camp, but I can't. I can't even surf cause the waves suck. To enjoy life now I have just started doing the same active things outside here and being creative. Climbing really crappy walls with friends, biking on the beach and just sitting down and enjoying the beach and God's creation.
Slow down life and enjoy the moments you are living right now.
My 2 cents:
I have been loving the song "the great estate" by the freelance whales. It's about reincarnation but the music is incredible and the chorus is about as catchy as any katy perry song that we won't admit is stuck in our head.
Vivre dans l'amour et la paix,
drew
Il n'y a qu'un bonheur dans la vie, c'est d'aimer et d'être aimé.
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