Thoughts and Dreams

I awoke at 3:30 AM after dreaming and my mind has not stopped racing. With just 22 days remaining, I think I'm getting some promptings that I'll never get it all done, say my goodbyes, accomplish all that I hope to do, prepare anywhere as much as I can, nor prepare Natalie enough, nor figure it all out - what to bring, what to leave, what to expect, how to truly be prepared.

What I'm about to do is very similar to dying - to family and friends. I'm about to start a new life - only I am taking with me who and what I am. And what I am willingly going off to do will not always be pleasant or easy, or convenient, or wished for.

I suppose this is all a part of the adventure we seek in life, or I seek. Perhaps, we occasionally look for a change of routine, a change of scenery. New, different, maybe even bizarre or exotic experiences. Possibly to awaken us, or shock us from our often dreamlike sleepwalking existence we think of as our routine and consistent lives.

It's more difficult to seize the present. To appreciate it - and all of its boringness, it's simpleness, it's routine - and feel truly satisfied or happy. Maybe that's why we engage in spendy so much time with entertainment - Netflix, YouTube, social media, gaming, or whatever - to compensate for a lack of appreciation for the here and now.

We think maybe to do something big and different or exotic even - like going off to a foreign country, to live and to do something we've never done might…invigorate us, change us, expand our understanding. Likely it will. But is it necessary?

Going to Madagascar will be like dying. Leaving one life for another. The change and difference so extreme as to convince us that it is a new life.

Would actually dying be so different? To take with us who we are, what we've become, and take it all into a new environment - a heaven, hell, or somewhere in between.

We think we know what that might be like. If you we think our curiosity and research tells us what we might expect. But… eventually we would probably discover it to be something far different than our imaginations could have.

So I'm about to die - from one life to another. And there isn't enough time to do what needs to be done. Things will go unfinished, and the world and relationships I leave behind will evolve and change in ways I can't comprehend.

We do in fact seem or think we know what won't change, what will stay the same. But the "Black Swan" of it all is that there are complications and events not even on the fringe of our comprehension. The new life I move into and the old life I leave behind will continue to flow like a river downstream and never be the same again.

Enough philosophizing.

I also can't sleep because my mind is racing on new ideas and thoughts I'm having about here and Madagascar. No worries or second-guessing my decision to go - just a few new ideas of what I need to do, to pack, the understanding that I have to pick up the pace, do those last visits, say the goodbyes, show Natalie what she needs to know to back me up there (and help keep me keep connected to the world I'm leaving behind).

I'm sensing something about the people I'm about to live with for two years. I want to make them my friends. I can literally see them already - adults and children alike. I sense a solemn and sad departure from that land - already-as if I did it right and learned to love as well as earned the privilege of being loved.

How can I prepare for that? How can I earn that? What can I do from the beginning of this new life for that to happen?