Tiny Island Life

My mind likes to connect dots. It's a lot like looking into space and making up your own stories about the stars and constellations. Life is complex and contradictory in all kinds of ways. When you begin to try to make sense of the seemingly random, the illogical, when you begin to connect the dots and grasp for answers, they will present themselves no matter how illogical or strange because that may be all that's left to grasp onto. And from this space, you can put together limitless stories from the same material. 

I left Santa Cruz with very little faith in most anything except my own ability to connect dots because that was all I had left to grasp onto--strings of miracles, shooting stars, glowing bugs, rogue spaceships, looking for serenity, anything. Grasping.

India and Nepal filled my life with all kinds of bliss--so much bliss that I didn't think there could possibly be room for much more. Bali brought a lot of residual muck to the surface that began to overshadow all the bliss. In Cambodia I released everything that came up leaving nothing but bliss and peace that I sat with for weeks. And as my days in Cambodia wound down, I couldn't help but wonder what was waiting for me on Gili Air--the possibilities as limitless as the Universe is vast.

Gili Air is a tiny island. In fact, that is exactly what the word gili means--tiny island. It is so tiny you can walk around the perimeter in under 2 hours. There are no cars here or any kind of motorized vehicle. Aside from the scattering of dive shops, provision shops, food shacks, and beach huts, there really isn't much of anything here at all. But, oddly enough, there are enough paths that cut through the center of the island that you can still get lost, even with a map.

I spent my first week exploring and getting lost--looking for something, maybe. I had a vague sense that's what I was doing anyway. I wasn't really sure. I did a lot of exploring and getting lost in India and Nepal, and bliss was all I found. Here, on Gili Air, I wasn't finding anything except a kind of strange void and lonely you can only feel when surrounded by lots of hazy people walking on all those twisting paths. This is peak season after all and this is all there is. People and paths.

What makes you feel alive? The question came up several times my first week. And so I made a list of everything that makes me feel alive--all those things that kept me alive those last years in Santa Cruz and all those things that have brought me bliss since I've been traveling. 

Here's how I connected the dots: I found a lot of bliss in India and Nepal when I needed it most. I learned to embrace it, and I learned to let it go. When I was ready the Universe unleashed all the unresolve I hadn't yet dealt with from my Santa Cruz life. I learned how to process it in a healthy way while in Ubud. Then in Cambodia I was able to release it. Now, I'm in a place that is very quirky and unique and pretty indeed and faced with the question: What makes you feel alive?

That is my goal here on Gili Air, that is my new challenge--to live in a void and fill the void from the inside out, to take the emptiness around me and fill it with any story I please. 

And I pass on the question: What make you feel alive? How do you connect the dots to make sense out of the illogical? When faced with a void, how do you fill it--from the inside out or from the outside in? Tell me your stories!