Greece: Between Athens and Jerusalem: Live Free, Die Hard

Flying Free

To me, living free is about having an open, limitless future. You aren’t burdened with living up to the high expectations of others, having to live your life for someone other than yourself. For example, when a baby is born, some parents fantasize about it growing up to be a doctor, or lawyer, maybe even president. These expectations pressure us to live up to the standards of our families and even influence our own standards until they become the same as our families’. That baby grows up thinking it must become a doctor or lawyer and eventually it believes that is what it wants. This is not living free. You may still be happy with your life and find a purpose, but it has been mapped out before you leaving almost no room for your own considerations.

Living free is about being able to wake up every day without a plan and watching as your life falls into place before you. Here on this trip, I didn’t have a plan. I walked into this with an open mind and like sitting on a lazy river, I allowed this experience to lead me wherever it desired. This experience has been unfettered by my own designs and instead of arriving with a checklist of touristy activities in mind, I decided to not plan anything, a tabula rasa-blank slate. This has been the most liberating aspect of this trip. I could get really philosophical and tell you about how this trip has changed my life forever, reconstructing my perspective on the world, coming to believe in the innate goodness of people, and forever bonding me to fast friends, but one thing I appreciate most about this trip has been its ability to teach me that life does not need a plan. I can simply show up and experience life as it happens around me instead of trying to control every aspect of it to suit my individual needs and realize that I a missing out on something.

I am what most people would call a perfectionist. I always have a plan, despite the fact that I enjoy spontaneity, I just end up feeling like I am wasting precious time on earth when I don’t have something to do. It’s that worthless feeling you get two-thirds of a way into a lazy day when you realize that sitting on your butt all day is nowhere near as relaxing as you thought it would be and you grow restless for adventure once more. This trip has been nothing but adventure, but I have not been in control of a single thing and it has been fantastic.

This trip has also taught me to trust in the abilities of other people. Each one of my classmates here has a unique talent or skill. For example, Zach and Markelle always know where they are going. Even when they are “lost”, they find themselves simply misplaced but they have an innate compass that leads them in the right direction. This was proven on the day when they were left behind in the craziest “antique” shop and somehow found the group an hour later at dinner. Just like that. So now, I don’t always have to be obsessing over where I am on a map, I can just sit back and let Zach and Markelle do what they do best. I trust them to lead me home.

While I know that freedom comes with responsibilities and consequences, that freedom is not always this easy, I have yet to experience any negatives. Living is not about checking off points on a bucket list but about growing in who you are as a person, with the people around you, in what you believe and finding happiness and sharing it with others. About dying? I don’t consider this as much. When you are alive to worry about death, you are not yet dead. And when you are dead, well, you can’t do much to change it so why worry?

Ways I have lived freer on this trip: