It sat on the ledge, basking in the morning sun, waiting patiently as if the entire universe watched in anticipation.
The banana I placed outside my window at the encouragement of a friend had been there for a good fifteen minutes. I was surprised as I half expected it to be snatched out of my hand as soon as I opened the window.
But there it was, unbothered by any animal capable of reaching the fourth floor of my hotel in Rishikesh, India.
After a quick 20 set Tabata workout, I headed out for the morning for both food and socially-distanced interaction, the only time of the day I can get either.
Surely the banana would be gone by the time I returned. If not, I should worry about the quality of the ones I had eaten earlier in the week.
The morning was eventful as I bought ten bananas for 50 rupees (~60 cents USD) and proceeded to find any animals nearby that weren’t already being fed. A side road behind my hotel had me feeding cows, donkeys and a particularly greedy monkey who just had to have the bananas in my bag instead of the one I was holding for him.
I found him again lounging on a perch a little ways off eating the banana as though it was his from the start. I tossed him one of my last in the bunch to which he nonchalantly ambled down the stairs to get.
Jerks need to eat, too.
Shortly after returning to my hotel from my morning outing, I found a monkey (could have been the same one for all I knew) eating the banana I had set outside my window. He left behind the scraps of peel which encouraged more visits from birds and other monkeys throughout the afternoon.
But the highlight for me in all this was a creative endeavor — putting music to the videos of animals in my FB/IG stories with everything from 80s pop ballads to 90s hip hop.
It’s the little things that make me smile the most.
WRITING REFLECTIONS
It’s a mistake to assume that those who journey are seeking answers. Sometimes they’ve already found the answers and that is why they journey.
And of all the answers I have discovered, even those to questions I didn’t know I was asking, none of them were buried in some distant desert or on top of a long forgotten mountain.
As true in The Alchemist as in life, all my answers have been found within. But the key to unlocking them has been through the experiences I’ve had, the people I’ve met, and in the versions of life I’ve lived.
And of course in the small moments when the noise of the world has quieted and we are left with the whole of who we are.
I know there is more for me to learn. Of that I have no doubt. But finding more answers is not the primary reason for why I travel or why I continue to choose this version of life each and every day. I have enough (for now) to move forward, to act more so than search.
So no, my purpose now — in this moment — is not to solve the mystery of life, to unearth the lost artifact of truth, or to find the ancient wisdom deemed worthy to be held only by a chosen few.
Those answers, if they exist at all, have no interest for me.
The other answers, the ones most relevant and significant, are as easily available to us as any breath we take.
And we find them not by asking the right questions, but by answering the ones that are always before us.
- Who do I want to be?
- What do I want to do?
My advice in this is to start small and build outwards, where you will eventually come to a place when the elusive concepts of fate, destiny and the manifested intent of the universe are understood for what they truly are:
Our will to make choices and our trust in the journey.
(Most other insights are better left for refrigerator magnets and old school bumper stickers.)
But these are my answers.
They don’t have to be yours.
As an aside, while I sit here writing this, I would take a moment to perhaps ask a favor. I would appreciate that when one of the hard days is upon me — when fear and doubt have won over meaning and purpose — and I look back and wonder longingly what the fuck any of this meant, perhaps you’ll remind me of but a simple thing:
No matter what, life happened and I lived it.
And I, in turn, promise to do the same.
All the best in this moment and the ones to come.