Stumbling on Inspiration

“The hardest part in any adventure is deciding which way to go, or what to do. Once the decision is made, the rest is just implementation.”

I’m paraphrasing (because I can’t put my hands on my copy of the source book at the moment), but that thought is the gist of a quote written by a woman adventurer named Robyn Davidson who, at the age of 27, traveled 1700 miles across the Australian Outback with only four camels and a dog. But her point was that figuring out what to do was harder than actually doing it, once the decision was made.

It’s a truth that any adventurer knows all too well, of course. Even adventurers in life. The tough part, if you’re an explorer in search of a job worth doing, a life path worth following, or a creative idea worth expressing, isn’t the work involved once you have a goal clear in your mind. It’s figuring out what that goal, or vision, ought to be.

And this is where summer vacations come into play.

As a self-employed person, I don’t actually get vacations. I have times I decide not to work. Of course, my paychecks are dependent entirely on producing finished products. So any time spent not working is not only unpaid, but also sets me back on getting paychecks after I resume working, because it means I have to get up to speed again on where I was when I left off—all of which is unpaid time.

Add to that the basic work ethic that has allowed me to be basically self-employed for the past 20 years (this translates into huge guilt struggles any time I’m not working as hard as I could at my most uninterrupted, undistracted best), and the always-close-to-the-edge finances of the freelance writing career field, and the end result is that I have a hard time taking vacations. In point of fact, when my fiancé turned 50, he said he wanted two things for his birthday: first, he wanted spend a week with me at a resort on some Caribbean island (an indulgence he’d never allowed himself before). And second … he wanted me to leave my computer at home. The first part was easy. The second part … well, that was the birthday present. Because it was hard to do.

In the end, of course, taking nine days to breathe without the pressure to connect, produce, or scramble was the best thing a doctor could have ordered for me—even if it did make it difficult for me to reconnect (or want to reconnect) upon my return. In fact, I wrote about my vacation thoughts and re-entry struggles on this site, soon after I returned home.

It’s worth re-reading, even if you caught it the first time.

But there’s another reason for indulging in those vacation idylls beyond simply allowing your mind time to rest, recoup, drift, have complete thoughts worth having … and perhaps have an idea that prompts insight, understanding, or growth. And it has to do with the difficulty in finding that goal or vision worth pursuing.

For all the effort we put into consciously trying to figure out what would make us happy or fulfilled, or what might be a path worth following … the truth is, we most often stumble onto the people, ideas, places, and visions that truly inspire us; that show us a goal or alternate future that resonates so strongly, somewhere deep in our hearts or souls, that we find ourselves fired up to pursue it. Passion is not a conscious, rational choice we make that a particular goal is something we ought to pursue, and, well, okay, is worth the sacrifices involved. It’s a fire, lit within us, that pushes us forward toward a goal that resonates so strongly with us that the sacrifices seem—at least at the beginning–to be not all that much of a sacrifice.

The implementation of those passion-inspired visions or goals, of course, requires very rational thinking and pragmatic decision-making. Envision, if you will, a mountain climber (or a pilot, for that matter). Her actual steps and moves have to be very well planned and precisely executed. But what made her want to climb mountains, despite the difficulties involved? Ah. That piece was, almost assuredly, anything but a rational decision. Passionate pursuits are almost always inspired by an experience that gives us a glimpse of an alternate path so enticing that we feel almost compelled to follow it.

So the best way to find the inspiration that might show us the path worth following, the job worth having, or the creative idea worth expressing … is to seek out new experiences. And new experiences happen most often when we vary our routines. As in … when we put down the large pile of implementation work in front of us and go wander and explore a bit. Mentally, or physically.
Sometimes, all it takes is letting the mind rest enough (say, at a beach, or in the woods, or some other place where the longer time clock of nature supersedes the noise of artificial crises, deadlines, and chatter of the world). But there’s also nothing like travelling to and exploring new places, cultures, or environments to increase your chances of stumbling on all kinds of things … including inspiration.

In July, for example, Ed and I took his 18-year-old son, Connor, to Europe for 10 days. Ed had promised Connor a trip to Europe ever since he was 15, but work kept getting in the way. And time was running out for a “family” trip. So off we went, even though neither Ed nor I really had the time, or the money, for such an indulgence, if we wanted to be rational and responsible about it all. Kids, after all, are only with you for a short period of your life. (And a REALLY short period, in my case.) So we stuffed the guilt in the hall closet and headed off to Paris, Venice, Innsbruck, Salzburg and Vienna to grant Connor’s wish of exploring old cathedrals and castles.

Important to note, here, is that unlike most bright high school seniors, who obsess about their grades and chances of getting into the college of their choice, Connor had pointedly ignored the whole issue of college. He didn’t know what he wanted to do in life, and he couldn’t see going to college when he had no clue what he wanted to study. He was also sick of sitting in classrooms and wanted to go explore the world. We argued a bit, early in the process, but arguing a teenager into college is, in the end, a ridiculous waste of time. Even if you succeed, they won’t thrive there if it’s not their idea. So we began working with him instead to find something else for him to do, following graduation. We finally got him set up with a volunteer organization that would let him go live in Mongolia for three months, tending livestock for a nomadic family up on the Mongolian Steppes. That might sound a bit radical to some, but it was what he wanted to do. And after that … well, that remains to be seen.

But it was against that background that we took off for Europe, three weeks before we’d pack him off by himself to go live in Mongolia for a while. The Europe trip didn’t have any overt or secondary agenda, education- or work-wise. It was a vacation, pure and simple. But an interesting thing happened on the way to the Forum, as they say.

We’d toured Notre Dame, wandered through Sacre Cour, the Musee d’la Armee and the streets of the Latin Quarter in Paris, and were having a leisurely lunch in the Piazza of San Marcos in Venice, having already wandered the streets, palaces, and canals there, when Connor unexpectedly said,

“So, do you think it would be possible for me to go to college in Europe?”

Before we could muster an answer to that, he added, “I mean, I know it takes more to get into college here. I’d probably have to do an extra year of prep to qualify, and I’d have to learn the language. But I’d be willing to do that.”

This from a young man who had refused to entertain any discussion including the word “college” up until that point. Who couldn’t see the point of studying much for anything (fortunately, he was bright enough to slide by with decent grades on very little effort).

As Ed and I brought our jaws off the table, it hit me. Connor hadn’t been motivated for college, or even to work hard in high school, because he hadn’t had a vision to work toward that resonated with him. Rightly or wrongly, he wasn’t inspired by the colleges his friends were applying to in the U.S.—or, for that matter, by the lives they envisioned themselves leading after that. But wandering through the streets of Europe, he’d stumbled onto something—a culture? A milieu? A way of life? A sense of place and history?–that generated a vision of an alternate path and goal. For whatever reason, he could see himself living in Europe. And that vision and goal resonated with him enough that suddenly, the work involved to get there seemed worth the effort.

We will see, of course, if the vision is an enduring one. At the moment, Connor is in Ulaanbaatar (Ulan Bator), taking language classes in Mongolian before heading out to nomad country. And in the course of his time there, he will undoubtedly stumble on additional insights, ideas, answers, and vision-inspiring experiences—perhaps even the idea that overseas living and “exploring the world alone” are overrated notions.

Nevertheless … it’s another reminder to me that we can get so immersed in the tasks of where we are that we lose the ability to envision places we might rather be. And that downtime, vacations, and completely irresponsible wandering are, at times, the most responsible investment we can make, if we want to live passionate, happy, and inspired lives.

The good news is … there’s still a little bit of summer left. So if you haven’t taken some time off yet … get going! The elusive inspiration and answers you’ve been seeking may just be waiting for you there.