8:38 am
Aqaba, Jordan
Last night as I walked near Al-Hussein Bin Ali Square it dawned on me most of want in life is incredibly difficult to attain; viable careers in acting, writing, and public service. Even love. Sometimes I wonder what it’d be like to have a completely different code of wiring.
What would it be like to never feel compelled to trek each corner of the globe? To file obediently in line and quietly sip my coffee at a cubicle? To settle for a partner who was good enough, but didn’t instill a wondrous fear within as I reached for her hand? To not be motivated to put my deepest and most personal work out into the world with hardly a clue of how it will be accepted, if at all? What would it be like? My guess is not worth the price of admission.
Today is my last day in Aqaba. An interesting quality takes over you when you travel to a new land. Each minute is felt so intently, personally even. The days don’t seem to melt together like they might back home. You’re not caught up in your day-to-day being and all it entails - whizzing past tollbooths, inching closer to the self-checkout kiosk at Target, or contemplating what it’d be like to be somewhere, anywhere else.
Now you are somewhere and new adventures and challenges accompany you along with thoughts you didn’t realize you’d kept at bay for so long. My trip to Petra now seems like decades ago, while my arrival to Amman just 2 days prior might as well have been in another life.
My friend Noah, 28, a Los Angeles-based journalist originally from Detroit told me the best piece of advice he’d ever received was, “Where you are is not where you were.”
