Today I am flying from Hong Kong to Italy to begin 8 weeks of travels, meet up with family and friends, connect with history, eat well, enjoy cities I’ve always dreamed of visiting – Sorrento, Naples, Rome, Venice, Vienna, Lubliajana, Genoa and Florence.
I also want to travel in a different way, not only to ‘go’ but also to ‘see’. I came across the quote;
Changing, it rests
by Heracles, and that will be my inspiration and aspiration.
I’d like to travel with more material awareness, I’m going to use trains and boats but no flights once I’m there, walking as much as I can. After a family wedding in the first week of the trip I’m sending clothes which don’t help me travel home so I carry practical, purposeful items. That said I am bringing a water bottle and a mug so I can enjoy cosy tea in dorm rooms in the evening. I have a beautiful wooden chopstick and spoon set I bought in. Taipei after being horrified with the amount of plastic spoons travelling (and hopefully gelato consumption may entail). I’m bringing my own LUSH products in reusable tubs so I eliminate the single-use toiletries (while enjoying their dreamy smells and tasty toothy-tabs!).
AND I’d like to travel with more being awareness. I’m hoping to use my phone and kindle mindfully to write these posts regularly, to finally complete Capra and Luisi’s, ‘The Sustems View of Life: A Unifying Approach’, Hong Hai’s, ‘Principles of Chinese Medicine: A Modern Approach’ and a few books on somatic and transpersonal coaching.
AND I want to embody them as much as read them!
I would like to move my Hong Kong, workday brain out from its rushing to be there already, to a more expansive, immersed state, to a quieter, yielding, accepting, surrendering one. To be at peace in a gallery queue, to experience equinimity when I arrive as a train departs, to find grace when I’m looking for directions, in the heat with a backpack. To bring mindfulness to holiday living so I can sense all that can be taken in in each moment.
So excuse typos as I exchange a laptop for an old phone and enjoy the change in photos from tropical plants to Renaissance and Classical culture. Because I’m hoping to change gear, move into being and rediscover myself in places which epitomise human learning, transformation, suffering and tragedy which have resonated throughout the western world.
