Reflections

I recently got back home from traveling abroad. Here are some reflections on the experience:

1. Perspective

Being in a new country opened my eyes to things I was not familiar with. By experiencing new things, I was able to expand my view of the world and appreciate things I hadn’t before. Different cultures express themselves in different ways, so the better I can understand cultures, the better I can understand people.

Although gaining new perspective can be achieved by being genuinely interested in the stories of others, traveling to a new place and living in that culture is quite powerful.

Traveling abroad also made me especially grateful for certain parts of my “way of life” while providing great, real-life examples of how I can improve it.

2. Spontaneity

This whole trip was quite a spontaneous decision, with no set-in-stone plans made beforehand. This would stress out many people I know, who prefer schedules rather than “game-time” decisions.

While I understand the sentiment, I find that making spontaneous decisions, especially with those close to you, creates a feeling that is hard to replicate. These are the times when I feel most grounded, most alive, and most full of life. After all, many of my core memories stemmed from decisions made on the fly, with no prior planning.

It’s not that I think planning is pointless, rather I think too much planning for the future, which only God truly knows, doesn’t yield the best results for well-being.

3. Scale

Spending time in another place across the globe where people have their own lives, their own experiences, and their own challenges makes me contemplate how small I am compared to everything. I am one of billions of people living in one of billions of locations on one of billions of planets.

When I zoom out like this, my anxieties and worries tend to lessen a bit. I realize that my problems aren’t as large as they seem. I also realize that there are billions of others out there, many who I’m sure are experiencing similar things as I am.

While this is scary to some, I find comfort in this idea.

Apologies for the break in my newsletters these last couple of weeks.

I hope you can gain some insight from these reflections of mine.

Keep making progress. Change for the better. Live the Heming-way.

Til next time,

Trevor

p.s. John 14:6