Journeys - Growth -

Talking with several clients this week about experiences and growth - staying behind closed doors, closed curtains, protecting what we have, or opening ourselves, our lives, up to risks, and gains. We talked of all sorts of continuing education - formal classes, experiential - life, travel, and the journeys - physical, emotional, mental, we all go on. Here are some of the quotes we gathered: 

Traveling - it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.  ~Ibn Battuta, 14th century Explorer

Travel isn't always pretty. It isn't always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that's okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.  ~Anthony Bourdain

Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, "Wow! What a Ride!"  ~Hunter S. Thompson

A favorite of mine - The world in which you were born is just one model of reality. Other cultures are not failed attempts at being you; they are unique manifestations of the human spirit.  ~Wade Davis

A journey is called that because you cannot know what you will discover on that journey. What you will do with what you find, or what you find will do to you.  ~James Baldwin

I've had my share of journeys - moves from one state to the next, from one city to another, from one culture to another; traveling through years of higher education; the journey through marriage, divorce, marriage; cancer to crashes; journeys through building and remodeling houses to negotiating with  the contractor dance; and then travels - from one life to the next, one relationship to another, jobs to careers, and Alaska to Amsterdam, fields of Sweden to fields of Southeastern Idaho. 

And I continue to journey, to change, to enjoy the ride (even if it wasn't the tour I thought I'd signed up for).