A year on. . .

So here I still am – on my bicycle riding through beautiful lands and encountering inspiring people. It’s been a year to the day since I left my home in Scotland. A year since I turned away from a job in which I wasn’t finding the kind of deep fulfilment that I know that I, being human, need. So I set out on a cycling journey to go and find it. A cycle journey about happiness – purposeful, health giving, people and land orientated, a conscious aware travel, opting for simplicity. A recipe for a happy fulfilled human life!

I’m surprised I’m still going – a year no less. From Scotland to Spain; then to Argentina and all the way up the Americas – I’m nearly in Canada. It’s been nearly 10,000 miles.

I try to think about the self that begun this journey. It must have been a very courageous self because I remember I was awash with fear, as I often am actually. I was turning away from the known; the comfortable; the unfulfilled, and toward the unknown, uncomfortable, and questionably fulfilling. Yet as I pedalled on each day pausing every so often to breathe in and taste the land and its people I made peace with the unknown. It was not so scary after all. It is my present life that is now comfortable and familiar, much like the old life was, except that now there is much deeper fulfilment.

Yes, I have found much happiness – in my-self, through others. Yet sometimes this journey has been indescribably difficult. I have experienced struggle that has sometimes left me desiring many of the things I had left behind. Many times I wondered about returning – and I so easily could have – but that would not have been the path to fulfilment for me. And so I rode on. . .and I watched as I came through struggle, and I did so again and again. . .and so I ride on.

But it won’t be forever…

I still miss the people I left behind – in fact I yearn for them at times – and there is a desire that runs deep to walk once again on the lands that I came to call home. That time will come. It may be when I reach Bhutan, but it could be before, or even some time after.

I will know when it is right to come back. . .I trust my process, my path. . .