Give me that eraser

On my flight this evening from Puno to Juliaca, Peru, a million thoughts came at me. Bombarding me with all the force that my little brain could muster. Such thoughts as: What the heck am I doing flying through the air? Really, flying? How can this huge chunk of metal filled with people be soaring through the air? What kind of age am I living in? Profound, I know. But then something else started to hit me. I allowed myself to remember back to all of the sights that I had seen, just days before. The ancient Incan ruins of Machu Picchu and Ollantaytambo. The little village on the island of Taquile in the middle of Lake Titicaca. The floating island people of Uros. The faces of the locals came back to me. I remembered the hut that was so dark and smelled like a bale of hay. I remember watching the woman in the hut embroider a pillowcase that she would later sell - her only source of income. Her hands and feet were extremely swollen for the fact that she lived on a floating island and it was so humid.  I asked if I could sew some stitches. My fingers fumbled with the needle. So ungraceful compared to her nimble and skilled dedos. She smiled at me through her gums as I attempted to stitch with the same ease as she did. The thread came out of the needle. Failure.
The thoughts kept coming. This time, deeper. The ones that cut straight to the heart and make you question everything. Why are there kids sleeping on the cold streets of Cuzco? Why do they just wear sandals when it is freezing cold outside? Why am I sitting in a nice airplane right now being served orange juice that tastes like Tang and a rubbery meat sandwhich? How did this turn of events come to be? Why I am in the position that I'm in, and they are on the streets?
The answers came slower than the questions had rushed in. They came, but resembled the process of trying to get the last bit of honey out of the bottle - slow. Painstakingly slow. But nonetheless, they came. I am where I am to do something. I was given all that I have to give it to someone else. I was born to help. WE ALL WERE.
If I don't help? Failure. Just like my dumb fingers trying to sew.
I'm still trying to work out the details of how to go about this. Like I said before, the answers are just dripping like honey. Slowly, and just one drip at a time.

Twenty

I can hold my breath for twenty seconds before starting to feel like I'm going to die. It takes me twenty minutes to wash my dreads and to make rice for the boys at Km 38 (not at the same time). In twenty hours I arrived in Lima on a very long and trecherous bus ride from Pucallpa. And today, I have lived for twenty years. Weird.
When I woke up this morning I didn't feel any different. Same as every other birthday. I always wake up and it just feels like Christmas. Not a birthday. But I guess I don't know the difference because I was never born on any other day before. Interesting how that happens.
I started thinking today as I was riding the train up to Machu Pichhu about all of the things that usually happen to people in their twenties. Lots. I don't know if it was the altitude or all the thoughts jumbling through my head, but I started feeling sick. But I'm only entering the first year of this crazy decade of my life. 
I still have so many questions though. So much that is unknown. I don't even know what I'm going to be doing next year for sure. "But You are with me. Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me." 
The future is scary. Getting older is gross. But it's all a part of this journey called life and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Happy Christmas, family. Times twenty.  

Leave

You need a series of  events (both fortunate and unfortunate) to pass in your life before you figure out the point. Or before you learn anything. For me, I think it took getting a new baby sister at the age of 14, my mom getting sick for 3 of my high school years, moving across the country to go to college, falling in love, learning how to rock climb, trying to surf and failing miserably, having my heart broken, making amazing friends, and finally...leaving. Right when everything was fine. Leaving all that I loved and all that I was. Or so I thought. I craved the change. And it has been the best decision I´ve ever made in my almost 20 years. 
God didn´t create us to stay the same. He didn´t create this whole world so we could just stay in the same city forever. Just look at the seasons, or the weather. It needs to change. Or else the universe would implode. My soul would have imploded. 
When you leave home, you can return and love it in all new ways. 


If home is where your heart is, then is it okay to have my heart in two places? 
Or does that get too confusing?