The Future, in Retrospect

Now and then i listen to song that elicits an emotional response in me. It's probably not limited to an emotional response. It's more like a connection to something ambiguous like the collective human experience. Regardless of what it is, when i listen to these songs I feel like I can relate. I feel like I could swap a few stories with this guy over a few beers at the dirty end of a smoky pub, and he would "get" them. One of those songs is Martin Sexton's 'Glory Bound'.

The song is about a guy that has an awakening after an accident, and realizes he's not happy with his life. The accident leaves him on the brink of death, but he can't help feeling grateful for the event that pulled him out of his monotonous slumber. He realizes he's not living if he's not pursuing the things he loves. So he sells what he can, packs up the rest, and hits the road to go wherever the wind blows him. Things don't come up roses for him... and he doesn't mind. Living in his VW bus, and surviving on whatever food he can find, he spends the next two years doing what he loves... playing music. During this time there is a constant tension between the life he pursues and the life he left. Questions about whether the risk and instability of doing what he loves will turn out to serve or harm him more than the "safe" life he left behind, swirl around his mind throughout this time.

The reason this song resonates so strongly with me is because this is how i see my life since i was 18. I spent the next 7 years bouncing in and out of the country, and in and out of the bush. I spent a lot of time in a tent, and a lot of time in solitude. I wasn't around my family a lot, and I left a lot of my friends in my hometown. When i reminisce about this, I didn't really have a reason to leave, other than "it just felt like i was supposed to". What i didn't know at the time was that taking this trip was what I needed to establish my life as my own, because I was never going to be satisfied with getting by. I didn't want to exist, I wanted to live. For me that meant getting away, and seeing the world. It's one of my biggest passions. And to do that I "packed it up and went to the winds", saying good bye to the family and friends at home for what i thought would be a year, and turned out to be a lot more. The guy that left never made it home again. Like Martin's accident, Australia wasn't the transformation, it was the event that started the transformation. When I did return, I knew i had started a journey that was only in it's infant stages. I wasn't the person I was when I left, and try as I might, I could never really fit back in the same mold as i occupied before. This made some of the relationships hard to re-engage in, and ended others. There were, however, a lot of people that let me be whoever I was in that moment, almost all of these relationships staying intact to this day. When i met this girl that thought like I did, and wanted a life of passion and risk more than a life of stability, I followed her to BC, and convinced her to marry me. Once one has a partner with this same mentality, the tension between the life you want, and the life the people around you want for you, becomes glaringly obvious. There aren't a lot of people that will want your dreams for you, and support you to that end, even if it means sacrificing in their relationship with you. Ironically, these are the relationships that, not only continue, but prove to be the most life giving.

Looking back over the last decade or so, I have wrestled with the same questions as Martin does in the song. Were my choices helpful or harmful to my life? Was "doing what I love" worth the strain of some relationships, and loss of others? Going into this new and terrifying chapter of my life, would i go back and change anything that lead up to it? While I certainly have regrets, I think that my major decisions would stay the same. If I had to do it all over again, I'd get on that plane to Australia singing:

say cheri, cheri, cheri won't you dare to?

Leave a message and your number please
Tie them up all my old fantasies
Put them in a big red bow and send them care of me

I'm taking a chance on the wind
I'm packing all my bags
Taking a mistake I gotta make
then I'm glory bound

So this is my encouragement to everyone who has ever had to leave things they cared about behind to pursue the life they needed to live. Some will understand, some will try to understand and fail miserably, some will think they understand but don't, and others won't try at all. The fact of the matter is this: We have to go out and pursue what we feel makes us most alive... we have to dare to. And regardless of how many mistakes we make, or how many cuts and bumps we receive in this pursuit, in the end, putting ourselves out there and chasing this will be more satisfying than leading a riskless life of wondering "what if?" We are more than glory bound in this, because at any moment we are doing what we love. It's not as if the glory is only manifest at the realization of our goal, it is intrinsic throughout the pursuit. Chasing what we love is, and will always be worth it. Because we learn more about ourselves and grow more through the pursuit than we do if we don't pursue it... even if we fail to catch it. The experience is rich, and an acquired taste.

So to everyone in my life that lives with passion, and takes risks, and sacrifices to pursue what they love, I say thank you. You inspire me. To everyone that has hung on this far, thank you... and keep hanging in there, because things have just begun to get interesting. And most of all, thank you to my cheri who answered with an emphatic "yes I would". Here we go.