When I was 20, I lived in the woods with some hippies in Maine. I'd met a family there and they partially adopted me, letting me live in a 10x6 wooden shed behind their house for six months. The mother of the family and I had developed a dear friendship and when it came time for me to leave, as she sent me on my way and hugged me goodbye, she gave me a most extraordinary piece of advice:
“Take risks.”
I don't recall her exact, eloquent explanation but it was clear that she didn't mean risks such as a testosterone-poisoned 18 year old boy would take, or risks you might read about in the Darwin Awards but the kinds of risks that push you out of your comfort zone, risks that your rational brain might respond to with, “nah, I can't do that- that's not within the social norms.” Maybe this advice felt so extraordinary to me because it was said at a point of departure when most people would say, “be careful.”
That advice she gave me has surfaced in my memory from time to time over the past 14 years and it still makes me smile. I suppose the kind of risks she was talking about were things like me quitting my job, renting my house and heading off overseas but I believe she also meant small risks, like reaching out to people when we might normally feel too shy or embarrassed.
One of the things I love about traveling is that so much of the process is about taking risks of all sizes; it's about intentionally putting ourselves in unfamiliar situations where we *don't* feel at home, where we aren't necessarily comfortable, where we can't just go through the day on auto-pilot.
All of these thoughts came flooding back to me the other day when I took a small risk that really paid off.
I was sitting on the terrace of my hotel one morning, soaking up the sunshine and reading a day-old, measly 10-page Herald Tribune I'd bought at a news stand for its imported price of three dollars when I looked up and saw a woman sitting on the terrace at a hotel diagonally across the alley. Most of the hotels in this part of Marrakech are tall and have terraces so when you look out at the view, you see people lounging and eating breakfast for blocks around.
But there was something about this woman that caught my attention and I didn't know why. The first thought that went through my head was, “she looks like someone I'd like to know.” Her back was facing me, she was writing something in a notebook, drinking coffee and was dressed very much like a Pacific NW admirer of nature. I watched her for awhile, feeling a little like a stalker when the thought went through my head, “well, you could just go over and say hi.”
And then, of course, all the voices in my head chimed in with, “she'll think you're weird,” “what will you say? 'I saw you sitting there and couldn't help staring'? She'll think you're coming on to her...”. I had almost decided to write the idea off when I felt my gut indicate that indeed, I should go talk to this person. So I decided I could comfortably fib with, “do I know you? you look familiar,” which wasn't entirely true but she did look like someone I would be friends with, if that makes any sense.
So, I looked at the streets below to figure out exactly which hotel she was at, walked into the lobby (no one was there) and up the winding stairs to the terrace, still feeling a bit like a stalker, until I found her and excused myself for interrupting her writing and told her that she looked familiar. She responded,, “I was thinking the same thing about you when I saw you, that you looked like someone I'd met before.”
At that, we sat on the terrace and talked for a good hour and a half, then ended up spending the day walking around Marrakech discovering just how much we had in common to the point that we both confessed to getting goosebumps. There were a number of “twilight zone” moments when my original gut impression proved right on: “this is a person you need to meet.” Later, as I said to this Kiwi woman, “wow, I'm really glad I came over and said hello this morning,” she agreed that indeed, our meeting had some sort of serendipitous quality.
So as I move through my life, whether I'm traveling or not, I try and hold onto that little tiny piece of wisdom that truly can change the path our life takes:
Take risks.
I remind myself that while it's not as hard to do when traveling, when I get back home, back to a routine, back to a job and a schedule and a more predictable life, I may need to revisit this advice regularly. It's especially important when we're sitting at office desks, plodding through our lives that sometimes may seem too humdrum that we remember how simple little acts like reaching out can really take us in fresh, new, amazing directions.
