Discover myself

in transformation. I am always discovering new ideas, revelations about myself, things that I want to accomplish or experience, and my roles in my community. For about the last year though, I have been in a place where I am not constantly trying to get away from myself. Escapism in my early years came in the form of books and television. In my middle years of life it was drugs and alcohol. In the present of my existence I like who I am and who I see myself becoming. I no longer live to distract myself, I am too busy living for that.

Whenever I’m hitchhiking, and living simply, it makes it way easier for me to see into myself. I’m always allowing myself to be exposed to totally different conditions, and ways of life (or rather, I allow myself when I remember to) and this is a huge part of the process.
I like to think of it in this way: my identity or self can be represented by a physical object (seashell, lego block, radish, etc.) while the conditions of life can be represented by a huge amount of sand in a fine sieve. If the object is placed somewhere in the sieve with the sand, eventually, as the sand runs out, the object can be finally seen and perhaps by seeing it, understood. If instead of a sieve, the sand were simply in a large box, then the conditions of life would not be able to change as much, and the object would never be fully revealed.
It’s this analogy that I’ve begun to see just recently as I take time to reflect on my recent travels. As I continually expose myself to elements of change, while staying aware of it, this enables me to see the aspects of my character that are permenant, fixed.