REVELATION

So my emotions did a 180 today and I owe it all to Eat Pray Love.

I was thinking about how she picks up and goes. And how I want that. How I love that. How I crave that. How I am restless and despite the fact that I am trying hard (REALLY REALLY ACTIVELY TRYING) I am still restless.

And then I came across this quote.

"Traveling is the great true love of my life. I have always felt, ever since I was sixteen years old and first went to Russia with my saved-up babysitting money, that to travel is worth any cost or sacrifice. I am loyal and constant in my love for travel, as I have not always been loyal and constant in my other loves. I feel about travel the way a happy new mother feels about her impossible, colicky, restless newborn baby--I just don't care what it puts me through. Because I adore it. Because it's mine. Because it looks exactly like me. It can barf all over me if it wants to -- I just don't care."

I realized that I don't need to pick up and move to *insert anywhere but North America* to see if I can find happiness. I already know that if I do I will find totally unencumbered joy there. Anywhere the plane should land. The type of ecstasy that makes you feel like your heart is too big for your body. I know that it resides there. It's easy for me. Your skin prickles with anticipation. On long train-rides to no-where, in run-down hostels with just a little latch to close the door. In the fumbling of foreign living. That feeling... it's the type of contentment that people write books after and others pay millions of dollars and days to find.

Hand me dysentery and discomfort. I don't care. It's mine and I love it. Hand me that colicky impossible baby. It's mine.

That's not the hard part. This is. Finding happiness here. Finding contentment in a place that brings me comfort but doesn't spark my skin to fire.

And that was all I needed. The identification of a new challenge.

So I made a happy list with a soy chai tea latte in hand. And then I decided to put my big girl panties on and own it.