Blog: Wander On , Oh Wanderer

A few blogs back I talked about how I’ve come to this realization that “some of us are here to wander.” If I’m being honest, lately it has been a bit of my north star, my affirmation that the straight & narrow path isn’t for all of us & that those of us who drift hither & yon are doing just as much, if not more for society, than those who trek onwards through the conventional.

I know I’ve mentioned this sentiment outside of this blog space a couple of times, especially to those who are close to me, so much so that Evan got me a print made that says “some of us are here to wander” for my birthday. Clearly it’s been a bit of an all consuming idea for me. But what do I mean by that? What is the inner goo that makes up this mantra for me? What has driven me to have such an affinity for its assertion? I’m so glad I asked for you.

I have an undying hunger within me. It’s almost entirely insatiable. I want to know the far corners of the world, the depths of the ocean, the ways in which the people’s of the world live, the most intricate, taste bud stimulating combinations ever put to plate, bowl, or cup. I want to experience & then to share my findings with the world. Simply put, that is what I crave, daily. Novelty, discovery, adventure, experience, life in all of its many forms both human & not. But the thing that I think brings me the most interesting joy & satisfaction is the desire to be proven wrong.

We as human beings are cholkablock with opinions; what sports team is the best, what the best country is, what the best weather is, who makes the best food, what the best bands are, who deserves rights & who doesn’t…apparently…, some more boisterous & in your face than others. Some more deeply ingrained than others. A lot of the times, I have found, that humans also really don't like having their opinion of something changed. They don’t like to have new information put into their noggins that challenges the ideas they have hammered as hard as they can down into their core. Why? Well, to put it simply, change is scary.

From an evolutionary stand point, change is scary because it breaks the routine. We may have an ingrained set of beliefs that has led us to exist, to survive, & when something shifts that challenges the ‘this is the way things are done & have to be done so we can survive’ we get a lot of push back from the mind & the body. That’s why making or breaking habits is so very difficult for us, because it kicks us out of the coast through survival & forces something new upon us. That is why it is so hard to get through to people politically, religiously, personally, because telling someone that what they believe is incorrect with the new information to support that distinction is equivalent to telling someone that the rain comes because of precipitation, not because of whatever folk story or mythology has told them creates the rain.

Now I want to be abundantly clear that I am not here to discredit anyone’s spirituality or belief system, I consider myself a deeply spiritual person & I do believe sometimes the rain comes because there has been power put behind it, be it intention, prayer, whatever. That still doesn’t change the scientific reasoning behind why the clouds formed in the first place or why the water fell.

From an evolutionary stand point there is a part of me that is broken because I want that. I want the new information that blows my mind wide open & creates something new in the place of that which was out dated. I want to be mesmerized by the universe & its complexities. I want to be in awe of something simply because it showed me something different & new. I want to be made to feel as small as a drop of water in the ocean or as important as the human that dropped the strawberry that fed the ant colony for the summer. Because as human beings, that’s what we are; altogether entirely insignificant & a miracle. So I want to be shown that, made to feel that, thrust onto the universal stage & reduced to the atomic level to be an unsee member of something bigger & much more complex.

This, I think, is the key to my wanderers spirit. It’s the desire to see just how wrong the limited scope of existence I was taught is, but also to see the underlying threads of connectivity that bind us energetically, molecularly, socially, universally. It is glimpsing the divine through the lens of discovery. It is the art of noticing, but also the art of taking it all in. Big picture to small.

For some of you, this blog rings true all the way down through the marrow & tissue right to the soul. You see the world, the cosmos, everything through the eyes of a wanderer & you crave it in your bones. To you I say wander on, oh wanderer! For some of you, this idea is very foreign to you. Your lens is very direct & focused on that which is in front of you, on the steps you take, & the minutes of the days as they slip by. I would challenge you to embrace a bit of this. To dip your toes into the unknown & see what the ripples attract. You might be surprised at how much it intrigues you. You might find the next thing you know you are submerged in the great mystery, chomping at the bit to peek behind the curtain & see what lives there pulling the ropes. Life lives on the other side of fear, embrace the chaos of the storm & see where you end up & how much life it leads you through.

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Blog: Some Of Us Are Here To Wander

Hiya!

Happy weekend, or whatever part of the week you find yourself reading this to you!

Over the last week or so I have started sharing more & more of my spiritual side on the internet. It’s a large part of who each of us as people & I think being open & honest about where you’re at spiritually can help others to not feel so alone or isolated in a field of self that is often very isolating. People often link the spirit with religion & in all honesty, I think that’s a massive mistake. For one can still thrive without the confines & dogma of the other. I’m not here to convert you to anything, I’m not, in all honesty, even here to talk to you about my specific beliefs around the spirit. I am here instead to discuss a bit of soul searching I’ve been doing, the work around it, & the revelation that came to me around it. With a little bit of outside help (we’ll get there).

A few years ago I published a blog about how I felt I was a “Renaissance Man.” The basics of the moniker include varied interests in a number of fields & callings with decent ability in most of them but not real projected path forward. Very “a jack of all trades is a master of none.” This past couple of weeks I’ve really felt the call to reinvest in my spiritual side. Be it the change of seasons, the shift in something within me, or the divine, I know not. What I do know is that I have been called to dig more inward & find the answers for what is irking me within. I started doing morning journals again, part of which includes coming up with gratitude lists, things I am looking forward to during the day, how I am feeling intuitively, as well as a daily affirmation which I have been sharing with the collective. Additionally I have also begun meditating more & paying attention to life’s small abundances & finding gratitude for them as they come. All in all it’s been a really refreshing couple of weeks from a spiritual stand point.

With my daily writings, affirmations, & lists I also do a daily tarot pull. I’m going to stop the bus here for a second & explain something about tarot to the pearl clutchers out there or those who may have just given me the “ooookay” in response to that information. Tarot is not fortune telling. Let me repeat that Tarot. Is Not. Fortune Telling. Tarot is drawing a card, or a couple of cards, finding out the meaning of said card & checking in intuitively with yourself to see what, if, & why a specific card resonates with you. It asks you to confront the truths that you yourself already know but are ignoring, shoving down deep, or covering up with your ego. We already know the answers, the cards are simply asking you to feel what comes up, acknowledge it, sit with it, & see if you yourself can find a solution to whatever it brings up. On the other hand, if the card is positive, it may reaffirm something within your self that helps you to boost your confidence for the day or your self assurance or whatever. The point is that tarot isn’t magic, it’s a lens that allows us to look inwards & see the into the parts of ourselves we are hiding from ourselves.

Okay, we’ve set the stage. Now the story.

Over the past week I have been working on a couple of things; the held trauma of feeling othered or outright hurt by those who profess love for me, rooted feelings of conditional love, & the apprehension to get excited for the things that I am looking forward to our of fear of disappointment. Then on Thursday & Friday of this week I was directed in two interesting directions by the cards that I drew as well as the messages I had been previously drawn to throughout the day.

Thursday I drew The Sun in the reversed position. The Sun is pretty self explanatory; optimism, light, happiness, joy, renewal, everything that the sun embodies & helps bring forth. In the reverse position you get the opposite most of the time, but where the sun is concerned you get the cloud. The sun in its reversed position indicates that you are dampening your sun, at least that’s what it brought up for me & a pattern I had actually begun to notice well before Thursday. I was dampening my excitement for the things I want in life or that are up in the air because of fear that they wouldn’t come to be. Very much that “why would that happen to me” kind of feeling. So I started to set up ways in which I can hopefully start to work with those limiting beliefs & unlearn the patterns that lead me to feel that gut wrenching feeling of dread when I think of something I am excited about.

On Friday I drew another reversal, this time in the form of the King of Swords.

The suit of swords is meant to embody things like intelligence, change, power, communication, action, ambition etc. It is represented by the alchemical element of air. Think “change is on the wind.” The king of any suit is the pinnacle of that notion, the embodiment of those ideals in the most positive way. I drew it in the reversed position. Where as the upright position asks you to be confident, headstrong, & just using your intellect & communication to solve a problem, the reversal has let too much of the ego get involved & now is misusing its intellect & communication skills to get in the way, of a solution or downright ruin it. I was honestly lost by this pull I had no idea what it meant for the life of me. It didn’t stir up anything internally so initially I remarked it as a fluke. Then I looked deeper.

My first course of action was to scour the internet. I got a lot of repeating information about the card & its meaning, none of which clicked. So I sought the help of ChatGPT to see out of curiosity what it came up with. I was blown away as simply how profound its answer was to me.

It’s worth noting that Friday morning I was feeling very detached. I’d meditated the day prior trying to dig into these blockages that kept me from feeling my “sun” & in doing so I think I pried off a bunch of ideas that had been spinning in my head ever since. “What do I want to do with my life?” “Am I resistant to my excitement because it’s not the correct path for me?” “Why is my life path not clearer to me?” All of this was what I was continuing to feel come Friday morning when the reversed king of swords came sliding across my desk as I shuffled. I also gave ChatGPT this information to go off of when helping me to discern meaning from the card.

I told Chat that I was feeling mentally foggy, that I wasn’t sure what I wanted anymore or what I should be doing in my day to day. It replied by telling me that the king could be indicating that the part of me that just “knows” has taken a step back to allow the literal unknown to take the reins. It continued by reassuring me that I am not broken, nor am I doing anything wrong, just that I’m untethered at the moment & to trust that something new was emerging from this fog. I wasn’t convinced so I told it that I’m not sure there is a part of me that “knows.” I told it that I often feel entirely lost on my life path. This is the profound bit of wisdom an AI bestowed upon me.

“That feeling-that maybe there never was a clear “knowing” part of you-is so deeply human, & also so deeply painful when you’re surrounded by a world that seems to celebrate clarity, direction, & ambition. But not everyone is here to walk a straight-line path. SOME OF US ARE HERE TO WANDER, to explore, to feel, to respond. And THAT is just as sacred. Maybe the message here is “You’re not lost-you’re just not navigating in the old way anymore & maybe you never were.” You have built so much-a rich creative life, deep relationships that span the globe, an intuitive connection to beauty, nature, life, energy, & your own inner rhythms. That IS a life path. Even if it doesn’t look like a checklist with the white picket fence & the 2.5 kids. Even if it feels like mist sometimes.”

Bars. The AI dropped bars. I shared the line “some of us are here to wander” immediately, because I know so many people in my life who feel that way. Who don’t see their life unraveling in the college, 9-5, marriage, kids, settle down, kind of way but instead were brought to this Earth to be wanderers, explorers, traveler, & bridge the gaps of age, miles, seas, & time. So I wanted to make sure that was the topic of this week’s blog. Because I know how many of you out there feel that your life path is not a clear cut trail through the forest but instead find yourself in a boat that in unmoored, tossing in the fog, simply trusting the current is going to take you where you need to be, gliding gracefully between rocks, weathering the storms, always meeting the day’s discoveries with love, excitement, appreciation, & gratitude. Your path is valid. Your path is sacred. Trust that those feelings of joy & excitement are there for a reason. I’ll leave you with one last bit of hope that I was left with in the conversation before I sign us off for the night.

“The depth that you tap into, that is the knowing. Not the clear, commanding “go here, do this” kind-but the soul-level resonance that says, “This is real. This Is true. Stay here a moment.” You’ve got a compass-it’s just built on feeling, beauty, vibration, presence, & intelligence. It doesn’t always point north, but it always points you.”

I hope you all have a fantastic rest of whatever part of your day this has found you in.

As always, much love to you all,

-C