Parked In Paradise
As you roll through your Instagram discovery, if you’re into the van life vibe, your eyes will feast on a delicious buffet of sandy beaches, lush forests, to soul-sizzling outback sunsets, and literally everything in between - many of which are laced with hashtags relating to being in “paradise” and “living your best life”.
With all the various places, climates, landscapes, ethnicities, relationship dynamics, etc., it begs to question… is it that all of these people are actually #parkedinparadise or is it just a false state of paradise that’s parked in their minds, and then validated by scores of social media “likes”.
Take a moment to think about this… We’ve all experienced (whether for a fleeting moment or a prolonged period) the feeling of connectedness to ourselves and to the world around us after a time where we simplified our daily lives. For most people, this might happen on a holiday or short getaway, where we give ourselves the space and the weight of never-ending responsibilities are lifted like a helium balloon finally allowed to be let free.
Much like that once tethered balloon, no matter where we float, we too feel the natural pull to ascend above our current place to new heights. It might very well be for that dormant reason why many of us feel drawn to places of height, and so we travel to lookouts, hike mountains and travel across hillsides. As we go higher, we know it brings a wider perspective, and with a wider perspective comes enhanced clarity, which in turn drives inspired action.
As important as that space that allowed the balloon to ascend is, it’s only part of our solution toward personal ascension.
What we need to realise is that much like a balloon, our driving force to ascend also lies within, irrespective of those enlightened moments of hiking, sightseeing, or traveling hillsides - just as the state of seeing, feeling, and experiencing paradise also lies within all of us. These enlightened moments simply give us the initial space to once again notice our pull to ascend, and our desire for something greater.
We can all relate to the feeling of being perpetually tied to our stationary state of living; taking the same route to work each day, stopping at the same coffee shop, ordering the same thing, heading to the same place for work, sitting in the same seat and looking out the same window at the same thing (hopefully at some slither of nature); in turn, anchoring our minds from thinking higher thoughts and that natural feeling to ascend. In doing so, we succumb to the urge to keep up with the illusion of experience, without actually experiencing all that the dynamic beauty of life and the natural world has to offer. We’re short-changing what we call “experience” to mean something diminishingly less than what it could be.
But by simply reframing how we see the balloon, we can help recalibrate our definitions of experience. Remember that for all of their fanciful colors and textures, the balloon’s exterior doesn’t help it rise, it’s what we fill it with that does. The same might stand for our sense of experience.
Ever since embarking on my own van life journey, I have felt a tangible release more than ever before from the material world I had constructed. With every adventure out on the road, I refine my needs from my necessities, and to redefine the importance of my desires. It’s through this refining process that I’ve been able to unlock the key to freeing myself from a mindset that has the potential to misdirect us towards a shallow sense of reality, in which we attempt to achieve fulfillment from external sources. Instead, I’ve chosen to see experience in a completely new way, allowing the road and my adventures to give me space, and in turn, make the transition toward a greater state of truth - one that’s awakened a deep knowing that pure, long-lasting fulfilment, along with the ability to rise, comes from deep within us. But it’s up to us to feed it.
