Life in a Backpack

I dream, and fantasize, and pay a lot of money for this moment, pictured right here. This was actually quite a exhausting moment, trekking through Costa Rica and waiting for a bus that seemed to never come. And lugging a backpack that was too, too heavy. But the fantasy, and here the reality, is that everything I owned and needed was in that relatively small backpack. I had a great book, a journal, a map, a camera, two changes of clothes, and a bottle of water. My vast life was reduced down to those simple items, and it was wonderful and simple and clear. I am so often overwhelmed by the endless choices I can choose to occupy my rare free time with: books, magazines, cable TV, Netflix, internet, newspapers, friends, family, music, that 34-page article in the New Yorker. Traveling to a foreign place, with a small backpack, brings life back to the basics and time seems to elongate. Here's an honest to goodness truth: I travel to slow down time. To have a day feel like a week, and a week feel like a month. When you're ten, a year is 1/10 of you life-that's huge. When you're thirty-eight, a year is 1/38 of your life- and that flies by! A colleague of mine says it's simple mathematics. I'm committed to getting the best of those odds.