The Most Exciting Destination of All: “TBD”
Once I realized I was more terrified of going backward than forward, I trusted momentum would carry me where I needed to go. Ahead.
While writing a book may have once seemed like a far-off endeavor, it has recently become a convincing and inescapable calling. It consumes both day and daydream. It indiscriminately slides as often into the unassuming waking moment as it creeps into the fitful middle-of-the-night toss and turn.
It hijacks my thoughts when I run. It holds my thoughts captive when I am still.
Since returning home from Cape Town earlier this summer, I have finally started and stuck with the arduous process of building out a book proposal. This unexpected herculean effort has signaled to every part of me – mind, body, gut and soul – that a version of my future is being set irrefutably in motion.
The requirements to pull a narrative nonfiction book proposal together have felt just as daunting and tedious at times as the act of actually writing a book. I appreciate that any authors currently trudging through greenlit manuscripts may beg to differ, and wish to challenge such a naïve assertion. I am hopeful that one day, I can join them on their side of that line.
It is, after all, relative, isn’t it?
That relativity is, in fact, the point. The litmus test. It is a deeply personal and pivotal invitation we can choose to ignore or accept when facing a new threshold of commitment and vulnerability.
I skirted around writing a book for months, changing the premise, inventing excuses for why I couldn’t and shouldn’t. I clung to procrastination until one day turning the book into a reality inexplicably felt like the only reality I had space and time for. When my resistance dissipated, the spell of inertia faded too. It was as if I could finally see where vision laced with purpose could truly carry me.
When I accepted this creative milestone as what was merely meant to come next, my understanding of self and self-discovery expanded. I knew I would need to resist the urge to dwell and capitulate. I would have to find a way instead to look inward and draw resilience from within. Then drive full-speed ahead with whatever reserves of agency, faith and conviction I had. There is a subtle sense of urgency – momentum I believe – mysteriously propelling me where I’m desperate to go.
On my darkest days, when doubt plagues and imposter syndrome visits me, I wonder if all I’m doing is setting myself up for rejection and accelerating the unwelcome arrival of Plan B. Worst of all, I fear I may be choreographing a humiliating retreat back into shadows I have only just triumphantly emerged from.
I realize at this point in my journey though, I am more terrified of going backward than I could ever be of moving forward. And I have uncovered that intrepidness by taking in the inspiring stories of other creators and travelers. In researching comps for my book, titles that sit on the same shelf and demonstrate a market for my thesis, I’ve devoured stories of heartbreak and loss as well as reinvention, rebellion and return.
It seems, by electing to go all-in on my dream, I have uncovered a most nourishing infinity loop, too, of discovery feeding motivation, of motivation feeding discovery. After fully enlisting self and soul, I feel no shame or embarrassment admitting that I have also sensed an invisible, almost infallible network supporting and guiding me on this new leg of my mission.
I have sensed a muse nudging and beckoning me. I have sensed the presence of a safety net which has softened the surface of risk just enough to make it feel like a place where madness and creativity can land. I don’t doubt this is all part of the process when one signs up to collaborate with the world and universe around them.
As someone who reluctantly took high school physics, only daring to go as near it as a Pass/Fail credit in her senior year, and even then with the heaviest of trepidation, I am still surprised when I find myself explaining my relationship with travel and self-discovery through several of its more notable concepts.
While I would never claim to understand these concepts beyond their Trivial Pursuit definitions, their spirit and intent are remarkably clear to me off the textbook pages. So much so that I believe the worldviews and contributions of geniuses like Galileo, Newton and Einstein, capture the meaning and beauty of movement better than many other metaphors I have studied or come across.
Thirty years ago, poor old Mr. Doris would have never guessed by the blank expression on my face that his lectures were registering with any success, let alone lasting impact. Yet, they laid down the scaffolding decades later for a most unlikely mirror that I would turn to during a most uncharted and uncertain time in my life and career.
Once I saw a correlation between physics and travel, I couldn’t unsee it. A growing fascination this year with Einstein as man and scientist only accentuated the poetic parallels.
Physics is the study of matter, energy and motion as well as the forces and interactions that govern how they behave. When describing the vastness of the universe and everything in between, physics has and always will confound me. When applying its principles like relativity, inertia, momentum and entropy, however, to travel, physics equips me with the perfect context and framework from which to better understand journeys of encounter, self-discovery and becoming.
There’s an uncanny, cosmic connection.
All of his life Einstein was fascinated by field theory. Einstein hypothesized early on that it wasn’t the charges or particles themselves, but the field in the space between them that held precious meaning. He believed that in order to understand the universe and the laws that govern it, we needed to focus on the energy and the relationships that exist between all those particles and charges.
For months, the best-selling book, The Alchemist, on loan from my boxing coach, sat untouched on my nightstand. There was a long list of comp books ahead of it and I wasn’t sure when I’d ever get around to reading it. I even tried to give it back at one point but he wouldn’t take it. Then last weekend, I decided on a whim to read it poolside.
Once I started I couldn’t put it down. I don’t remember the last time a book affected me so deeply. It fed me just what I was hungry for, reinforced choices I had made, and suggested that the calling I had accepted didn’t have to feel like delusion or disconnect. One can say what they will about this book, but the beautiful simplicity of its message landed that afternoon just when I needed it to.
On one hand, I know it was just a book. But on the other, I know it was also a message. It was a book about omens that couldn’t help but feel like an omen to me. It mattered as much as it did because I read it right when it seemed like I was meant to.
Astonishingly, only 24 hours before I cracked The Alchemist open, I had encountered the parable from its ending for the very first time in another book. I had rushed all afternoon to get to the final page and was eerily met with a story that was now profoundly familiar to me.
With this in mind, I am certain of but two things. First, this book proposal, no matter its reception or outcome, is in and of itself an exhilarating if not humbling gateway to my life’s elsewhere and what’s next. By shipping my work out into the universe, I’m essentially boarding a flight to life’s most exciting destination of all: TBD.
Second, I am vividly aware that right now is my window, my now-or-never time to take flight. Relying on what alchemists call the Tria Prima, three foundational principles of matter for transformation, I am ready to embark on the next segment of my journey. Behind my experience, my background and my imagination, my very own alchemist’s mirepoix, I will follow Taste, My Compass, wherever my purpose and potential summon me.
I know I won’t be changing my trajectory all on my own.
I’ll be amongst and between all those particles and charges – the tastes, the wonders, the encounters and collisions of this spectacularly generous universe.
