Lovely Jo sent this quote to me the other day as a sort of “hey, it’s you” alert.
It’s from Tales of a Female Nomad by Rita Golden Gelman, an American woman who, at 48, took off to discover the world. She sold her possessions and became a nomad, living in a Zapotec village in Mexico, sleeping with sea lions on the Galapagos Islands, etc. From the preface:
I am a modern-day nomad. I have no permanent address, no possessions except the ones I carry, and I rarely know where I’ll be six months from now. I move through the world without a plan, guided by instinct, connecting through trust, and constantly watching for serendipitous opportunities.
Up until very recently – like two months ago – it didn’t occur to me what is really rather obvious to most: I wander a lot and don’t like to settle. I’m a nomad. It was nice not being aware. I blindly went about dismantling all the expectations of adulthood, one commitment at a time, convinced I was merely being efficient and practical.
I was mostly unaware because it was a gradual disintegration of commitment. Not a sudden about-face. One by one, I dropped off everything that pinned me down unnecessarily.