Good afternoon world. It has been almost a full year since I've sat down at this chaired and dumped the cache of my mind onto the internet, and thus eternity. Perhaps the primary purpose of this 200,000 word document is to see how I grow and change throughout life; as I travel, learn, and wonder about the world I've been placed in, I've become curious as to how as little time as a year can change me.
In the past 10 months, I have done more than many do in a lifetime, and I believe I've reached the peak of the first two decades of my existence. I've experienced the fantasy of Rio de Janeiro and the excitement of the Amazon Rainforest. I've revisited one of my genuinely favorite places on Earth, Los Angeles, and had the privilege of sharing it with someone new. It was there that I committed my life to one person, and secured my opportunity of seeing the world and experiencing life's marvels with a companion whose captured my ultimate adoration. My paramour, my complement, and my copilot, will continue to sit in the seat to my right, and I now have confirmation that that will never change.
Our thirst for adventure lead us to Cambodia, one of the few lawless places left that can still offer pure, unadulterated adventure. As it's been said before, the travel bug instills a desire that I compare to being lost as sea and thirsty; you can drink the seawater and satisfy yourself for a short time, but the contents of the water will only leave you more desperately parched than before. The only way to avoid it altogether would be to not get lost at sea in the first place, and enjoy your clean and filtered water from the tap day after day. And where's the fun in that?
As I do every winter, I grew dormant and discouraged once the days turned shorter. This time was slightly different than other years, as it was soon time for me to find out if I would spend my career flying in the Air Force. Of course I received good news and had secured myself a pilot slot. At that moment, February 12th 2015 at approximately 6:00pm EST, my life changed from one phase to another. Prior to this moment, I was an aspiring pilot. I was an Air Force Pilot candidate. I was competing for a slot. In fact, since the I first dreamed of being a pilot, I'd estimate around age 5, I was competing for it. I was in a massive race with thousands of other dreamers for over 15 years, and those who won, will end up in the air for most of their life. For my entire life until very recently, everything I did seemed to have a number attached to it that went into deciding the remainder of my life. Every exam, every missed homework assignment, every casual workout, every hour in a plane, every hour on flight sim; everything. So to say that I earned my slot as a pilot, is to say that I won the race. The worldwide competition, for which so many people lost hope and settled, resulted in me being a pilot.
And now I am no longer competing. I have to get my degree, pass my flight physical, among other things; but until I start pilot training and begin competing for the C-5 at Travis AFB, I can enjoy my victory. I can relax and dismiss the stress, but most importantly I can comfortably believe that my life will be spent flying, rather than jut aspiring like I've done since as long as I can remember.
So here we are. It's been almost a year and I've unearthed more of the world, got engaged, and secured my pilot slot. Now I'm back to my usual routine of struggling through classes and twiddling my thumbs until my next adventure. That will be Dubai by the way, per my honeymoon. We're staying on Jumeirah Beach, perhaps the only strip of land to compare in value to South Beach or Beverly Hills. We're eating dinner in the most expensive venue on Earth (the Burj Al-Arab), spending the end of Ramadan in one of the world's largest mosques (I'm curious as to how this one will play out), and hopefully will spend the night in the desert.
We can't simply follow the formula of checking in at an all inclusive beach resort in the Dominican Republic for a week. We've come to discover last summer that it's not the exotic aspect of these lavish trips that leaves us with a sense of satisfaction and achievement. Our overall enjoyment comes from the challenges we're faced and forced to overcome. We do not take vacations; we travel to a place, and we conquer it.
For example, even our stateside trips to Miami or LA are not by any means easy. We find things that the average tourist simply cannot do, and we do it. Whether that's exclusive nightclubs, or shopping at Tiffany's on Rodeo Drive, it is something challenging. In Cambodia, simply walking to the market or commuting to work is far more difficult than anything you could do in America. And that is why we went there.
Dubai shall be no different. Honeymoon or not, we will find someplace difficult to find and a pain in the ass to get get to, and we'll go there. It will be a place with a native tongue of which we can't even read, and we'll get along fine for two weeks. Then we'll find something that you can't do anywhere else on Earth, such as eat dinner at the most expensive hotel in the world, and we'll do it.
In other news, I've started reading Marco Polo's manuscript detailing his 24 years of epic travel, The Marvels of the World. I'm about halfway through this historical piece and I must say, it is eye-opening. Here you have a 17 year old boy teeming with curiosity, walking from Venice to Beijing, and writing down every detail that caught his imagination along the way.
What few people know about Messer Marco, as he calls himself, is his obsession with birds. The passion with which he writes deepens substantially when he begins to describe falcons of wherever he happens to be at the time. While he always notes the religious customs, language, and maybe a paragraph on the local economy of a place, he goes on about the local birds for pages, in vivid detail. It is so clear how captured he is by the miracle of flight, and the excitement he's brought by looking up at the vastness of the sky.
You see, falconry was an expensive hobby for the upper class in the 1200s. It was a way to pass the time as snobbishly as possible, almost similar to golf today. But in the East, the falcon was laden with symbolism and the ability to steer and command a bird of prey, a creature that has the ultimate freedom to fly, had a profound and almost divine significance. It seems that for Marco Polo, falconry was more than just an expensive way to pass time. He had a passion, made clear by the enthusiasm with which he tells his story. That passion and respect for what the falcon represents seems to be what he followed for 24 years, and lead to his name being remembered 800 years later.
Another aspect of that makes his story great, even 800 years later, is his reverence towards Kublai Kahn. Marco does not write about Kublai as most Dark-Age-Catholics would, with typical disgust toward a ruler claiming to be the one and only God. Instead, he writes about Kublai as if they were friends, as if he looked up to him, as if he left Mongolia with a role model. He wrote about how generous Kublai was to the poor, his charity even to his enemies, and about the culture of mutual respect among the Mongol rulers. He especially mentions going on leisurely falconry trips together, as Kublai was also passionate about birds of prey. It sounds like young Marco found a mentor, on the other side of the world, who influenced his life for the better.
There are two things I've found that, if embraced, influence your life in a great way and guide you to where you should be: a passion, and a mentor. And that's what lead Marco Polo to a meaningful and enjoyable life. But to take it a step further, Marco Polo was renown as an excellent storyteller. His account for events and places were so well recollected, it's rumored that Kublai Kahn gave him a position on his court.
Then, two decades later while bored and imprisoned after returning to Venice, he told his story once more from start to finish. He told the world what he had seen, what type of falcons fly on the other side of the world, his friendship with Kublai, and all the amazing things people miss out on by never leaving home. By the 15th century, his tale was the most read book in history, second only to the Holy Bible. Among those reading was Christopher Columbus, who was inspired to see the Far East himself, but didn't want to walk for three years straight.
Another five centuries later, here I am reading the same manuscript in equal or more enchantment. My fascination with Marco Polo comes in the similarities we share despite being 800 years and a world apart. In his life Marco Polo traveled an estimated 15,000 miles, immeasurably more than most humans in history. Yet just last summer I logged 77,000 miles in just shy of three months. Regardless, here I am writing my story, including all of my passions, mentors, and experiences. And the same way Marco Polo couldn't resist telling the world about the red striped falcon he found in the Gobi Desert, I never forget to write a detailed account of my 15 hour flight to wherever I'm going.
So that's what's been on my mind over the past 10 months. Hopefully I'll come across more thoughts I can't help but sharing. Until then...
No comments:
Post a Comment