...Life In Motion...

"To live is to be marked. To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know. In perfect stillness, frankly, I've only found sorrow."

- The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver

I've always tried to live by the motto 'live out loud.' The past few years, that vision has been a bit clouded by things like career, drama, a city that feeds on all your baggage and a lifestyle of endless workweeks with nonstop blackberry attention. The Assistants have been fighting to wrap our heads around what exactly we want to gain from this adventure we're departing on in a few short weeks. Lately, even as the stress piles up on having enough money for clean water and everything else on our checklist, it's becoming more and more clear why we chose to do this: to live, to expand our thinking and to take the chance of letting ourselves not have a plan.

Here's the thing about the Assistants: we're planners. We plan everything. We plan down to the minute and we itinerize and we make tabbed folders and binders. We've been living life through a very planned and precise lense - and it was fine because it was our job - but that lense got real heavy, real quick. Now that we've been able to detach from that type of lifestyle, we've been able to say - forget the posty notes, forget the agendas and let's just live each day as it comes. Even if this comes mainly from the fact that we're both way too broke to plan anything on any sort of financial stability - we still have started to fathom what it will actually be like to wake up in the morning and not feel the world crashing down around us in the form of checklists, to-dos and planning.

Speaking of living - today I helped my brother (who is a corn-fed, tall, strong ass farmboy) get our farm truck unstuck from the mud. For some reason, I felt high I was so excited I could help him. I was raised in town, so trust that I have zero experience in 'farm living' so I walked outside in a pair of crocs (Gasp! - I know) got beside my brother and helped him shove the truck out - okay, full disclosure, I pushed a couple times, then he made me get in the cab and hit the gas while he pushed. I felt like I was touching a different kind of lifestyle and I didn't feel an ounce of resentment towards it or an ounce of 'this is below me' attitude.

I've been feeling that I'm moving closer everday to being more of the person I want to be in my life and less of the person I have to be to survive. It's also becoming more clear that if these minor experiences are opening me up in ways I couldn't have imagined - Rwanda has many surprises in store for me, my psyche and my life. I'm starting to let go of the fear that those surprises will be something I'll regret and closing in on the idea that these surprises are going to change my life in amazing ways.