Maybe We’re Supposed to Be a Little Scared

I've been feeling a little flat lately.

Not unhappy. Not burnt out. Just... flat.

The ideas haven't been coming. The words have felt hard to find. My motivation has apparently packed a small bag and left for somewhere warmer, without leaving a forwarding address.

I hate feeling like this. Genuinely hate it. My brain usually has seventeen tabs open, three half-formed business ideas running through it, a trip I want to create, a room I want to rearrange, and at least one completely unnecessary project that has decided it needs to happen immediately. Like turning my home gym into a literal jungle gym, no really, I’ve added 22 plants. 

So when it all goes quiet, I notice.

And I've been sitting with why.

Because I have built a life around something I believe very deeply: that sometimes we need to leave the familiar in order to find parts of ourselves we can't hear from inside it.

Apparently I needed reminding.

I think that's part of why I keep going back to Africa.

Africa has been doing this to me for almost twenty years. Long before I started bringing groups of women there. Long before Grit & Grace Adventures existed. Long before I understood that this strange pull I felt toward that part of the world would eventually become woven so deeply into my actual life.

Africa strips away the noise for me.

And after taking another group of women into Botswana this past June, I cannot stop thinking about fear.

Not danger for danger's sake. Not recklessness. I'm talking about that tiny electrical current that runs through your body when you realize you are very, very far outside your normal life.

When the sun has gone down over the African bush, and there is nothing between you and the wild except canvas.

When you hear something moving outside your tent and suddenly remember, in a very cellular way, that you are not at the top of the food chain here.

When an elephant appears impossibly close. When a lion looks directly at you, and every cell in your body understands something your rational mind hasn't quite caught up with yet.

You are safe.

And also...

holy shit.

I know that feeling well. I've spent enough time in the bush that I know the sounds, understand the rhythms, recognize the calls. Parts of it feel strangely, deeply familiar now.

But familiarity has never taken the awe away. I hope it never does.

This time, I got to watch it happen to the women I was travelling with.

That might actually be my favourite part of what I do: I know what's coming. They don't. And I get to watch their faces.

Women who have careers, families, and responsibilities. Women who, at home, are mothers and partners and daughters and sisters and caregivers and the one who knows where the passports are and the one who makes sure everyone else is okay.

Women who are very accustomed to knowing what comes next.

And then we dropped ourselves into the African bush.

Suddenly there were things we couldn't control. Unfamiliar sounds at night. Elephants beside lions and us so close you could look into their eyes. Mokoros moving silently through the Delta. Days when we had absolutely no idea what might appear around the next corner.

There were moments of nervous laughter. Moments of "Are we REALLY doing this?" Moments when someone's eyes went wide, and I knew exactly what she was thinking because I was thinking it too.

And I loved watching what happened on the other side of it.

The moment fear turned into wonder. The moment shoulders dropped. The moment she stopped asking whether she should be nervous and became completely consumed by what was happening in front of her. The moment she forgot to be afraid because she was too busy being amazed.

And then came the awe.

That word has been on my mind since I got home.

The English word awe has roots connected to fear and dread. And I love that, because somewhere along the way we turned it into something soft.

We say a sunset is awesome. Dinner was awesome. And based on the completely unreasonable amount of joy I recently experienced over my new upright Dyson vacuum cleaner, apparently superior suction is now also awesome.

I wish I were kidding.

There was a time when I thought adventure was exciting. Apparently I have reached the stage of life where I can vacuum a rug and yell at someone to COME LOOK AT THIS.

But real awe isn't always comfortable.

There's an old philosophical idea called the sublime: the strange experience of encountering something so enormous, beautiful, or powerful that it overwhelms us. Where awe and astonishment and fear exist at the same time.

Standing near a lion in the wild is pretty much the perfect example.

You are looking at something magnificent. You desperately want to keep looking. And some very ancient part of your brain is simultaneously saying: THAT IS A LION; if I do not look at it, perhaps it does not see me.

I have felt that many times. And here is the thing: it doesn't go away just because you've done it before.

I lived in the bush. I know lions. I understand intellectually what is happening. And then one looks directly at me and somewhere beneath all of that knowledge is still a human animal thinking:

Jesus Christ. That is a lion.

Maybe that contradiction is part of what makes these experiences so powerful. Because modern life has become incredibly good at removing uncertainty. Google Maps tells us when to turn. Our phones predict the weather, translate the menu, tell us how many minutes until the Uber arrives. We can read 487 reviews before deciding where to eat lunch.

Much of that is wonderful. God knows I appreciate convenience. Again: see my enthusiasm over my new Dyson.

But I wonder sometimes what convenience costs us. Because human beings didn't evolve knowing exactly what came next. And perhaps a carefully managed life can eventually become a very small one

I wonder if that's sometimes what flat actually is.

Not sadness. Not unhappiness. Just... we haven't been astonished in a while. Nothing has asked enough of us. We have become so good at creating comfortable lives that occasionally we need to deliberately step outside them, just to remember what fully awake feels like.

Travel interrupts that. Especially the kind I love

You arrive somewhere, and suddenly you don't know all the rules. You don't know what tomorrow will look like. And you don't entirely know who you will be there.

I think that last part matters most.

At home, we carry so many identities. The ones we earned. The ones assigned to us. The ones we wear so consistently we forget they're not all of us.

And those identities aren't bad. Many of them are the most beautiful parts of our lives.

But they can get loud.

And then you travel halfway across the world and something strange happens. For a while, you are none of them.

You are just you. Or maybe some version of you that hasn't had much airtime lately.

Maybe in Colombia you become the woman who salsa dances until midnight. Maybe in Nepal you become the woman who climbs the mountain. Maybe in Botswana you become the woman who sleeps in a canvas tent in the middle of the African bush while lions call somewhere in the darkness.

Is that version of you fake?

Alan Watts has a chapter called "How to Be a Genuine Fake," and that phrase keeps coming back to me when I think about travel. Because perhaps travel permits us to try ourselves on. To inhabit another version of ourselves long enough to discover she was actually there all along.

I watched that happen in Botswana.

I watched women become braver as the days passed. Not because they stopped being afraid. Because they learned they could be afraid and do the thing anyway.

And I don't take it lightly, watching that happen.

Because courage isn't the absence of fear. Sometimes courage is climbing into the mokoro while your brain quietly reviews every nature documentary you've ever watched. Sometimes it's sleeping in the tent. Sometimes it's standing still while an elephant walks past.

Sometimes it's simply getting on the plane.

For some of the women who travel with me, that plane might be the bravest part. Signing up for a trip where you don't know anyone. Going somewhere your friends think sounds slightly insane. Leaving the people who need you. Permitting yourself to spend the money, to go, to matter enough.

We don't talk enough about that kind of courage.

And then your world gets bigger.

And strangely, your problems often get smaller.

Awe does that.

Stand beneath an African sky full of more stars than you knew existed. Watch a herd of elephants cross the water. Hear a lion call in the darkness. Sit silently while a giraffe moves through the landscape like some beautifully designed creature that shouldn't actually exist.

For a moment you understand how small you are.

And instead of that being frightening, it can be incredibly freeing.

I have watched women go quiet in those moments. And if you know groups of women, you understand just how impressive that is. But there are moments when nobody needs to say anything. You just look at one another. Sometimes there are tears. Sometimes laughter. Sometimes someone mouths, "Oh my God."

And sometimes you just sit there together, knowing that whatever is happening in front of you is becoming one of those memories you will carry for the rest of your life.

Those are the moments I live for.

Not just experiencing them myself anymore. Watching someone else experience them for the first time.

Because Africa isn't somewhere I sell trips to. It is part of my story. I grieved the loss of my father whilst there. I let go of versions of myself that were no longer serving me there. I learned, slowly and not always gracefully, to be okay with who I actually was. Africa held every single one of those versions of me, and it never once asked me to be anyone different.

I don't take that lightly.

I sometimes think we talk too much about finding ourselves through travel. I'm not sure we need to find ourselves.

We might need to lose ourselves a little.

Lose the routines. Lose the roles. Lose the certainty. Lose the carefully constructed version of ourselves who knows exactly what she likes, what she doesn't, what she's capable of, and where all her edges are.

Because somewhere beyond those edges is another version of us.

And she might surprise the hell out of you.

I have lived in Africa. I have returned again and again. I have spent enough nights listening to the bush that some of those sounds feel more like home than they probably should.

And still, Africa does this to me.

Still humbles me. Still scares me sometimes. Still makes me feel tiny. Still makes me feel impossibly alive.

Maybe that's why I keep returning.

Not because I am fearless.

But because there are places in this world that remind me I don't want to be.

And maybe that's what I've been needing to remember lately too.

That feeling flat doesn't mean something is wrong. Maybe it just means it's time to go looking for awe again.

Which is frankly a little ridiculous, coming from a woman who has been home from Africa for three weeks and leaves again in three.

Apparently my threshold for "I haven't been astonished lately" is somewhere around 21 days.

Some people need a vacation once a year. I apparently need to be periodically dropped somewhere that makes me question my significance in the universe.

Whatever works.

Maybe travel isn't always supposed to make us comfortable. Maybe that was never the point.

Maybe sometimes we need to stand somewhere wild enough to remember that we are wild too.

And perhaps the question isn't: "What if I'm afraid?"

Perhaps the question isn't: “What if I'm afraid?'

Perhaps it is: “What would I never experience if fear got to decide?'"

Penny

xo