NO YESTERDAYS ON THE ROAD

    “What you’ve done becomes the judge of what you’re going to do – especially in other people’s minds. When you’re traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don’t have your past to hold against you.   No yesterdays on the road.” – William Least Heat Moon

        I absolutely love this quote. When I first read it, I was blown away by just how accurately it describes the way I experience myself when I am travelling.  My travels to other countries and cultures allow me to visit interesting, beautiful places and I thoroughly enjoy myself, but it isn’t why I travel.   For me, travel is a daring opportunity to extend myself outside my comfort zone and embrace the unfamiliar. Especially when that which is unfamiliar is my sense of self.

       An unbridled sense of freedom inspires me to spend time in unfamiliar places.  When I am in these places there are no preconceived notions of who I am or how I will present myself.  There are no expectations or assumptions based on my past. I feel free to be just as I am. “No yesterdays on the road”.

         At the age of forty-eight, children grown and on with their own life’s adventures, I was ready for a change.  I took a job out of the country. This was the first time I had ever lived outside of my own country or even outside of my own community.  It was the first time in my life that I would be living alone.   I was faced with the challenges of a new culture, learning to drive on the opposite side of the road, adopting a work culture unfamiliar to me and forging new friendships.  That experience was a confidence builder as it opened my mind to the reality that I could do so much more than I had once believed possible.   The second half of my life had taken an unexpected change in direction.

         Two years later I travelled for the first time to India, having committed myself to a month-long yoga teacher training course at an ashram in Rishikesh. It changed the direction of my life and became the catalyst for a continual longing to actually know who I truly am. Some years later, after a few more trips to India, I decided to start my own travel business, exclusively for women.

“Travelling to new places opens our minds,  nurtures our spirits and brings us closer to our true nature. It helps build confidence by shattering our imagined limitations.

        I wrote this for the home page of my women’s travel website because, based on my experience, this is what I believed I could offer other women. My intention was to empower women by supporting their travel experience and encouraging them to stretch themselves beyond perceived obstacles and limitations. It was a fabulous experience allowing me to spend time with wonderful women. I witnessed women grow in confidence as we travelled to unfamiliar places and I watched it spill over into their personal lives. 

        I am not suggesting that travel is the only experience that can afford us this sense of liberation.  It is the known gateway, into a freer sense of myself, that I have realized and so it is the one I can lend my voice to.  Being in new environments, without the expectations embedded in familiar roles and identity, brings with it the freedom to be just as I am.  The challenge is to nurture this experience of myself when I am home in my familiar environment.

       We become conditioned over our lifetime to be a certain way and automatically accept this as who we are.  Yet, when we find ourselves in unfamiliar places, we can easily experience a fresh sense of ourselves.  Honest self-inquiry can raise our awareness of this phenomenon operating in our lives.  We can start exploring new ways of seeing ourselves.   

        What experiences allow you to feel free, even if only for moments, from the familiarity of the conditioned sense of yourself?  

        How do you nurture those experiences?