Eat, Help, (Hopefully) Love

So I have spent the last 9 days wandering, mostly by myself, around Paris, France.

I'll give you a moment to seethe in jealousy..... done? Good. Let's continue.

This is the first part of a 6 week trip I am embarking on for multiple reasons, and I think I've just about covered the section where I purely enjoy myself. I literally have had nothing on my agenda but wander, eat, drink, and try not to spend too much money in one day. I have seen the end of the Tour de France, the top of the Eiffel Tower, heard the bells of Notre Dame, and seen waaaaaay too many naked European men in one room. It has been wonderful.

And I am scared shitless for the next leg of my journey.

I am traveling to Burkina-Faso, one of the poorest African countries, to volunteer for 5 weeks. I'm not going with an organization. I'm not staying with a bunch of people my age. I am going pretty much on a whim with little to no idea of what awaits me.

What am I scared of you ask? Well, yeah, I am REALLY freaked out at the idea of a bug laying eggs in my leg or something, but that's not what I think about as I look out at the twinkling lights of the city of love.

I wanted to do this to find out who I really am. What sort of person I have become. How I react when I leave behind friends, technology, safety, family, basically everything that is familiar, and put myself in an alien world.

In other words, what happens when I go 5 weeks without facebook and hair gel.

I have this memory as a kid of me coming out of the circus with my parents in downtown Miami. There was this homeless guy Sylvester, and whenever we saw a show in that area my parents would always see him and talk to him and give him money. I remember seeing him and putting my hand in my pocket and fingering the $1 bill and the $10 bill I had in there.

Now, the question I was asking myself was not whether or not to give him anything. That was a given. I was caught between giving him the $1 or the $10.

Walking the 20 feet over to him was one of the longest I can remember. I was a mess trying to decide, knowing he needed it more than I did, but knowing that it was 2 weeks of allowance money. My heart was pounding; every step I took was slower than the last.

I finally grabbed a bill and handed it over with a smile. It was the $1.

These days, I do not look twice at a homeless person. It is a part of my daily routine, I am almost immune to it. And I know it is a stupid thing to worry about, but I wonder about the change that has to have taken place in me, to go from mentally agonizing over how much to give to not even thinking about giving anything.

And this is only one example. It's the tip of the iceberg of how much I've changed as a person, and the fact is, I don't know how much of it has been for the better.

So it's time to confront all of that. I'm going to help and relate to people I don't know as much as I possibly can, and maybe while trying to learn about and concentrate solely on others, I'll learn about myself. And once I learn who I really am, maybe I can respect and love myself enough to push all of my potential out of the hypothetical universe and into the real one.

And maybe, just maybe.... I can learn reasonably fluent French.

It can be a little lonely sometimes being by yourself in the city of love, but all of the love I've seen in this city has only strengthened my belief in it. I think my favorite example was something scribbled on Oscar Wilde's tomb:

"She was sitting in a cupcake shop, reading you. - J and B"

So here I go to see the world

With my eyes and with my soul,

And so much love, so little hate,

The Devil inside won't control my fate.

Love yourselves. I'll see you in September.