I woke up yesterday and said, “Okay I’m good.”
Time to come home. Time to travel the next piece of the path that I’ve laid out for myself.
It wasn’t a sense of panic or missing anything. It was just clarity. “Done. Next.”
When I left California almost a year ago, there was a lot of personal story that was built up around why I was doing what I was doing and how much it meant to me. Truth is, all of that was incredibly valuable to me and will always stay very very close to my heart.
However, as this year has carried on, many things changed. Many things.
I’ve experienced all sorts of different things and they have changed me. Going back to Europe settled my heart. I started to enjoy the smallest of things. More importantly, I settled into truly enjoying my own company without always trying to get somewhere else. I was just there.
I sat by the water in Prague eating lunch listening to music. I surfed the beautiful waves of Portugal and spent the happiest moments of my life with someone incredibly special to me. I walked through beautiful churches in Rome by myself. I explored the small streets of cities not seen by most. I ran in no general direction in Berlin only to come across beautiful murals and art that were overgrown with weeds. I laid on the beaches of France reading about Buddhism and floating in the water without a care in the world.
I lived.
And still am living…more than I’ve ever lived before.
This way of going about this past year served me. It served me in that I came into full contact with what was really happening in my life – not all of it pretty – and worked through that. But most of all, it gave me clarity. I wrote about this idea of having an illuminated path the other day. That has become even clearer.
So when I woke up yesterday, I knew that it was time to end this trip and move onto what I’ve actually always known that I’ve needed to do.
I needed to commit.
I needed to dedicate myself.
And every single day, I had to put forward the effort it was going to take with an unyielding sense of belief that what I’m doing is the right thing to do.
I haven’t given myself that chance and I’m going to take it.
I didn’t expect this year to turn out the way it did. There were breaks in travel, unexpected events, and everything else you could imagine in between. But it taught me. It shaped me. It molded me and helped me understand who I was, where I had been, and who I was destined to become.
No matter the challenges and what came my way, how could you ever say that wasn’t the most perfect thing for me?
This journey isn’t over, it’s just changing.
But I know what season I’m going into. The season of creation. The season of commitment. The season of following what I’ve seen in my mind for almost a year now and have been preparing myself for.
This trip did that for me.
It got me ready.
It helped me remove all of the thoughts or doubts that surrounded that path. It taught me, through space and time, what truly mattered to me and I wouldn’t have changed that for the world.
The timing is now right.
I’ve fit right into that grooved path and now all there is to do is follow it every single day.
It’s time to evolve.
It’s time to answer the call fully.
Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project