Head and Heart

After visiting 17 countries across four continents in 2007, my new years resolution focused on far more personal and athletic goals than adventurous ones. Adventure is but one piece in a composite that for me approximates happiness. It is one piece that along with beauty, love, wisdom, and respect, creates an environment in which happiness can flourish. Man is assuredly defined by his choices, and not by his abilities. A desire for ability can infiltrate choice, and though my choices have remained adventurous, priorities that define choice are beginning to evolve away from my monolithic perspective.

I began my year with an intimate and powerful human spark, but my preordained choices revoked me from an immediate potential that my heart demands. Despite a love for adventure, the illuminating smile of a new friend indicted my priorities, and made me, in days, question the choices that have, for years, defined me.

At the time when my heart calls for California, my head has selfishly dictated alternate circumstance. The future thrusts its way through the present, an omnipotent but transient moment when the possibilities of the future become the memories of the past. I am resigned to the Stoic, in the classical sense, reality that I can only live the choice that I have created, which today, is another life in India.

As I departed California I was fortunate to have the companionship of great friends. The company we embrace makes the experiences we cull from life also the ones we cherish. Flanked by some of my best friends – Californian, German, Italian, Dutch – I spent 10 days en route to India, between Eindhoven, The Hague, Amsterdam, and Dublin.