finding familiarity in the unfamiliar

When I was in school and also later in life I felt like I sometimes struggled to find a place in a rigid community of people. I felt like there were short periods of time when everyone was open to built new connections at a new place and that once their doors would close there was little room for new connection.

Now that I’m traveling I feel like I’m free, for the first time in my life really, to move between and with people just the way it feels right. No holding on, no clenching to people, no exclusive groups. And when I meet someone that I click with I’ll just stay with them. I keep moving with them together, I go and explore them and this newly created bond. And we do that hiking or sharing meals, sitting there at night with cards, candles and cigarettes.

And then sometimes you realize that a completely different person, maybe from a different country and culture, with different upbringing and a whole different life at home, is here now together with you just feeling, experiencing the same as you.

It’s become one of my greatest lessons of this journey how powerful it can be to find familiarity in the unfamiliar. I learned to lean deeper into feeling who attracts me and who doesn’t. Balancing my needs with theirs, maybe changing my plans and staying open for change.

The other night we were sitting all at the big table of our hostel and everyone was telling their life story in a nutshell. It seems so absolutely random how we all ended up at that same table that night. Maybe looking for similar or different things. And the most beautiful thing is that with this we can create something new. A bubble of familiarity in the afar from the home we had. I love the openness of it, learning that there are so many different ways to connect with people and that home can mean so many things.

Once you understand that, no one can take that from you.

But there is one problem: You want more of it!