India
Frozen Peas
Life was never about having more—only learning how to receive what is already in front of us
Most of us are drawn to the idea of traveling somewhere that somehow changes us, a place we leave behind, but that never really leaves us.
We want to feel something so deeply that it changes the way we see our current life and pushes us to transform it.
I was sitting in the back of a taxi in India when I realized what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. It wasn't that it just suddenly fell upon me by being inspired by my environment.
It was that I finally gave myself permission to say what I wanted aloud.
When did we start needing a place to be what opens our eyes to what is already there?
I've realized that, a place will
break you
shape you
And yes transform you but the real shift happens
when you stop negotiating with endings and start focusing on beginnings.
When I was in India, it didn't break me—it cracked me open.
I grabbed my camera and went walking the streets outside of my hotel.
I was walking through complete chaos, yet somehow I felt completely at peace. Ironically, so did the man sitting quietly on the side of the road.
The only difference between the two of us in that moment was that I was holding a camera, and he was eating from a small bag of frozen peas.
He sat there quietly but his joy was louder than the chaos surrounding us.
I sat with him on the road wanting to communicate.
But we couldn't, no more than the smiles and laughs we would share by simply pointing, and making hand gestures like monkeys in a zoo.
I sat there quietly, why was life so easy for him when his life looked so hard?
But he never answered any of that to me, these were simply the lessons I needed to receive for myself being taught through him.
That we often mistake lack for suffering—life was never about having more, only learning how to receive what is already in front of us.
Raw Moments of How This Story Came to Life
