Adventures for the Soul

One of the things that I’ve always wanted to do is to travel the world. In my 18 years of life I haven’t seen that much of the world, but I’ve visited various places: Florida, about 6 islands here in the Caribbean, I lived in the Dominican Republic, and this past year I visited Chicago. This last trip has been one of those moments in life that make you see the world a little differently. While I was there I got to experience a completely different lifestyle, one I was not accostumed to.

First of all, it was the very first time I got to see snow, and it truly was spectacular, and cold. Second, I got, what I think is, the tourist experience in a foreign place: I got to walk through the streets of the city, rode a taxi to different stores, drank hot chocolate under the snowflakes, and all in all, I got to see a different way of living. It doesn’t sound like much, but to me it was an eye opener, because it showed me that life isn’t confined to my little island I call home. There is a whole new world that I don’t know about outside, and it is one that I’d love to learn more about.

Now, through the years, I’ve also learned that life isn’t only the physical stuff. It is a combination of what I’ll call the outside world and the inside world. The inside world I can define as the immaterial part of a person in which he/she can think, feel, and just go beyond the physical world in which we live in.  That inside world is composed by feelings, thoughts, ideas, fantasies, impacted by the lives of others and how all those things come together to create the person that I am today. Some situations in my life have changed completely who I am and how I see everything.

One of those “eye-opener” moments was when I was about seven years old that my seventeen year old cousin died in a car accident. It really was a life changing experience, not only for me, but for my whole family, and because it impacted all of us it changed how our normal lifestyle used to be. Situations like this have made me the person I am today, and even though some of them aren't good experiences, they are still little bad journeys that I have to go through in life so I can find the path that leads me to the good. Now, I find this concept to be very cliche, at least that's how I've always seen it. Everyone in my life has told me this at least once, and sometimes I take it for granted, but I have learned to understand this and know that it is 100% valid and true. I also can admit that I've only lived 18 years of my (hopefully) long life, and that there is still a lot of things I haven't encountered that will want to turn my world upside down. I'm trying to just take every day one step at a time: to just go with the flow and see what the new day will bring. Sometimes it's hard, sometimes it's not, but that's what makes life worth living, the thrill of not knowing what will come next, and I do know that whatever comes next will be worth every breath I take because it'll help me see things in a new perspective and grow into the wonderful adult I hope one day to be.