An Xennial’s quest to the rest of her life
‘God can dream a bigger dream, for me, for you, than you could ever dream for yourself. When you’ve done as much and worked as hard and strived, and tried, and given, and plead, and bargained, and hoped. Surrender. When you have done all that you can do and there is nothing left for you to do, give it up. Give it up to that thing that is greater than yourself and let it then become part of the flow … You can dream this much, but God has a bigger dream.’
– Oprah Winfrey
“In the end, I’ve come to believe in something I call the ‘physics of the quest’, a force in nature governed by the laws of gravity. The rules of quest physics goes something like this: If you’re brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting and set out on a truth seeking journey either internally or externally, and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher and if you are prepared most of all to face and forgive some of the most difficult realities about yourself, then the truth will not be withheld from you”
– Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat Pray Love – 2010
I grew up thinking my place in this world was a geographical location. A country, a city. But I have come to believe that the journey is not an outside one, it’s the journey within that counts.
The next day I headed for Cape Leeuwin, with it’s beautiful white lighthouse. Here I was, after 4000 kilometers down the Australian West Coast, at ‘the end of the world’, once again. I walked over to the water where the Indian and Pacific Oceans met. This was the third time I was ‘at the end of the world’. Ushuaia – Argentina in 2008, Cape town – South Africa in 2010 and now South Western Australia. How many more places did I want to visit? I turned around and looked up towards a gigantic white lighthouse my ancestors left behind, and I thought about all the sailors that crossed these oceans over the centuries. Cape Leeuwin they called this place, Dutch for Cape Lioness. A little piece of home, all the way on the other side of the world. I stood there for a moment watching the oceans. I wondered what it was I was looking for. Or, was this wandering the earth just a purpose in itself? My ancestors had been globetrotters, and therefore maybe I was too.
“There seems to be a kind of order in the universe, in the movement of the stars and the turning of the earth and the changing of the seasons, and even in the cycle of human life”.
― Katherine Anne Porter
In 2014, my brother and I went on vacation to Morocco. One afternoon, I was watching him and his buddies ride the waves from the beach. He could just sit there in the ocean for hours, tons of waves rolled in, but only once in a while he decided to catch one. He patiently waited for the right timing, started paddling, let this one go, caught another one and fell off. A few minutes later he tried again, managed to stay on, rode one all the way to shore and came out to catch his breath.
Watching him surf made me realize that in surfing not every wave is for you, catching the right wave requires patience, and you won’t know if it is the right one until you catch it. Maybe you will fall off, and have to start all over again, or maybe it will be the ride you will remember for a lifetime.
What if you can learn how to ‘surf life’, I wondered. Finding your right frequency so to speak. Everything you do, every choice you make, every experience, can be like riding a wave. What if you can master surfing life like riding a set of waves?
“One day you’ll leave this world behind, so live a life you will remember”
Avicii – The Nights
What if you can learn to surf life like riding a set of waves?
The Surf of Life 