Update

An e-mail I sent to a good friend of mine, updating him on my life.

Hey X, 

I am glad to hear that you have been flinging your cat around. If you wish, I will show you advanced cat hurling techniques and if I deem your skills acceptable, even cat annihilation techniques. Despite the name, these techniques also work on pigs, bears and humans. You may have already intuited this knowledge. 

In response to your question, my life has been rather fulfilling of late as I've been learning a lot (though I always wish I had more time to reflect on these lessons!). I guess I shouldn't be, but I was rather surprised that the martial arts gym I've been going to for the past two months has been the source of my insight. I absolutely LOVE this gym. It's always packed, but that's OK because the gym isn't your traditional gym where you get on a machine and flail away. No, entering this gym feels like entering a hipster military bootcamp. Tattooed patrons are doing jumping jacks, pushups and squats. Others are doing kettlebells, still others are doing yoga or stretching.  

But you can find that at almost any gym. What separates this gym is the intensity with which many of the parishioners are approaching their workouts. See, what makes this gym special is that there's at least one professional fighter and about a dozen amateur fighters. If they're sloppy in their workouts they risk broken bones, concussions, even death. They train like their life is on the line because it is.  

This has been one of the most invigorating times in my life. I only took the basic membership which didn't allow for participation in the fighting classes but I was inspired just by training next to these warriors. Even the girls had spirits which pushed mine. One of them I might have passed on the street or in my daily routine and never given her a second thought but she came to the gym sporting massive bruises, green and purple on her shins. Others, men and women, had tape wrapped around broken toes, bruised ribs and yet they continued to train.  

My membership ended this past Tuesday and I've been feeling a bit listless as I've rested. Going back to training alone will be... well, lonely. I can find other teams to train with but I don't think it'll be the same. Distance athletes are too laid back. They may compete in 100+ mile races but many of them are mellow, married with kids. I miss the fervor and the intensity of a person who trains knowing that his own life is at risk. That's when I realized that I take this attitude into every area of my life, physical and otherwise. 

I grew up believing in certain truths. If you don't get a job at a big corporation with benefits, your life will be miserable and no one will want to marry you. If you don't go to the right school, you won't get such a job. If you don't get all 100's, then you won't get into the right school. The purpose of life is to have kids. People will get old and weak. As an adult, you have no time to enjoy life. Asian men will never be attractive to, nor respected by, Caucasian women. Whatever you do, don't date the white women.   

I could go on. But the most painful one was that getting steady pay and coming home to watch TV and go out to eat at restaurants was the best life had to offer. Play softball in the summer. Go to some island somewhere for vacation. I howled in the prison of that belief system. In all my ambitions, in all my training, I've fought for my release. I work so hard because I'm still trying to escape that prison. Perhaps others may find joy and God in such a life. Perhaps. But after a quarter century and change of living, I realize that normal sort of life numbs my sense of divine proximity. I sense God most truly when something great is being risked, when something audacious is attempted. God seems the furthest away when things are soft and safe. I long to live at the very fringes of existence, the places you can't bring a lawn chair, the places where iPads, iPad2s, iPhones and fancy cars look laughable.  

Sometimes I wonder whether it's my youthful vigor speaking and whether this attitude will flare out with age. "To hell with that!" I say. A Christian brother, parroting conventional wisdom, said that a guy like me couldn't do marathons and triathlons many years ago. Well, I got 2 of each under my belt with more to come. Conventional wisdom says that we grow decrepit and laid back as we age. Yet there are 80 year old power lifters and 90 year old marathoners. Those who say something is impossible should not interrupt those who are doing the impossible. 

Mmm, if this email seems a bit harsh and stringent, please forgive me. I am writing to answer your question but also as an exhortation and reminder to myself. In James, the author writes that a man who listens and fails to act is like a man who looks at his own reflection and then goes away forgetting what he looks like. I'm trying hard not to forget who God made me. For so many years, others drew my identity for me. Only lately have I begun scratching away the faded paint from the mirror and finding myself underneath. The reason I am so adamant, so unyielding, so contemptuous of those who lived the life I formerly did is because a big part of me hurts to be away from them. I desire community. Long for it. But I just can't have anybody. Five Points helped me realize what I need. I need people who train with their lives on the line. My soul is on the line, X. I find myself thinking like a man released from prison. "I can't go back. I'll do whatever I have to not to go back." 

Walking The Earth

I like to travel.

Every year from when I was 5 to when I was 21, I went somewhere with my parents. The Bahamas for my 13th birthday, Disney for my 8th, Tennessee because we got a deal, Maine because we had the time, and Washington D.C. because the cherry blossoms are beautiful. We've been to China twice, Costa Rica, Toronto, Hawaii.

On my own, I've been to Virginia, Chicago, St. Louis, Canada, Taiwan and Peru off the top of my head. And now I find myself browsing through the Gap Adventures and Lonely Planet websites. I've got the travel bug again. I imagine myself walking through Cambodia eating the fried spiders that they sell on the street for a buck. I'd like to walk through Aokigahara and feel the eery chills creep up my spine as I catch a glimpse of a skull or a femur poking through the bushes. Or maybe swimming in a New Zealand fjord. The Ganges. The Nile. I already did the Hudson. The bazaars in Cairo. The forests of Romania. The ruins of Carthage. The camino de Santiago. The streets of Merrekesh. The trees of New England.

Over a year ago, I created a list of a 100 things I wanted to do before I die -- a bucket list. From my estimates, about a third were travel related. I've accomplished a few of them. I've seen the sunset over the Pacific ocean. It was beautiful. More so because I had a beautiful girl by my side as I saw it.

I wrote a private blog elsewhere about how it was a sin to be bored. I stand by that. Boredom is a testament that the world God made isn't sufficiently good. It's worse than bad, it's just plain mediocre. And I think that's the reason I like to travel.

As many unorthodox things I've eaten, most types of offal across 3 cultures and live shrimp being the headliners, giant fried spiders are still incredibly alien for me. And yet, they're a part of everyday life for others. I want to see life from their eyes. I know I won't -- that's the limitation of being a tourist, but I'd like to at least taste it. The world is endlessly interesting, rich and full. How can someone be bored in this world?

And more than that, I like making friends.

I think back to my Andean adventure last year, truly an unforgettable experience, and I have this simultaneous sensation of babbling in the failed attempt to express the grandeur of lofty, snow-capped mountains, the noisy tranquility of the cloud-forests and the remarkable beauty a cloud has when it gently rolls over the mountain you're standing on. Yet, as I babble, I feel that I'm not even speaking at all. Somehow, despite the contradiction, I feel as if I'm sitting in a knowing and reverent silence, honoring the majesty I've had the privilege to witness. But more than just the things I saw (and thinking ahead to the things I wish to see), I think about the friends I made on the trip. Yeah, I was friendly with many of the people that I met on the trip, but I feel really privileged to have been able to talk to and communicate, in Spanish, with the guides and porters that came with us on our pampered, Western tramp through history.

As privileged as I felt to be able to witness the accomplishments of the ancient Incans, I feel equally privileged to have been tapped to deliver a speech to the staff that had served us so well throughout the trip. As I stood there fumbling over my words, cursing the fact that my r's always roll even when they're not supposed to, I realized that the greatest thing about traveling was the new insight you gained about yourself. No, it was more than just insight. It was the fact, that every new location demands a reinvention of the self. The greater the distance, the further from familiarity, the more reinvention that is acquired, the more it will demand of you as a member of the human species.

And so I travel. And I become reborn with each stamp of the passport.

If this is rebirth, then should I seek to end the samsara cycle like a Buddhist? The journey trope always began at the doorstep and ended in front of the church door in Medieval European literature -- a symbol of death and finality. But I suppose that implied question is for another time.