"Just Live"

I am leaving the Philippines tomorrow night. It has been over three weeks since I've left New Jersey and gone on the adventure of a lifetime. I've traveled to places I've never been and places I never thought I'd ever see. I got a chance to experience things I never thought I'd experience. For the longest time, I spent so much time adhering to my passions, so much to the point that I never bothered to look outside of them. This trip has taken me to different places physically, but also, different places mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

For the last few years, my approach to things was very simple: If it works, don't change it. I picked up this mentality mainly from my martial arts training. If a technique worked for me once, and if it worked for me twice, then I wouldn't deviate from keeping that technique in my repertoire. I'd keep it, and I wouldn't modify it. Somehow, this mentality transferred over into my life. For instance, if I was at a restaurant I've been at before in the past, then I would usually order the same thing I usually order. Why? Because it's what I know. A while back, I tended to go after things I know that work. If it works, I don't deviate it from it. Same went with working out, talking to people, and almost everything under the sun. If something worked for me, I'd keep it, and I wouldn't bother to really go outside of what I knew worked for me. I felt there was no need to.

However, in the past several weeks, I've been put in a position where I had to truly go beyond my comfort zone and actively move toward the world, as opposed to wait for it to come to me. In this past month, I've seen so many things and experienced so many things. I experienced a new different chapter in my life with someone I love who also happens to love me. I've been in the presence of hundreds of people of faith from every state in the country worshipping together. I've walked through an authentic Japanese tea garden. I've stood underneath the Golden Gate Bridge. I've seen the body of a loved one in a casket. I've seen the intense sorrow of a family's loss of a wife and mother. I've spent time with a family I have been dying to know more about my whole life. I've stood on tops of mountains. I've been to churches hundreds of years old and prayed within their walls made of coral. I've been to a Taoist temple and stood respectfully before statues that I have never seen. I've seen children running barefoot in polluted city streets and swim in polluted rivers. I've stood on the white sands of the most beautiful beaches in the world, looking into a crystal-blue ocean that seemed to stretch in the distance in all directions, forever. I've gone to bed staring at the Manila skyline. I've stood on the ground where a legendary Filipino warrior thrwarted off a Western invasion. I've eaten and tasted foods I've only heard about through relatives or through TV and books, and I've even eaten foods I never thought existed. I've gotten up close to the smallest monkey in the world. I've eaten on a river cruise. I saw a live cockfight in a smoky, noisy gambling den. I never thought I'd ever do these things...but I did, and it showed me how big this world is and that it isn't always such a bad place.

A great man told me before I left for this trip, "Mike, it's time to crack open your world. Don't train while you are away. I want you to have fun...lots of it. The world isn't just Filipino martial arts." I was struggling to grasp what that meant...but as the trip began, I began to see what he was talking about. As cool as it would be to have the world being centered on FMA, as it is for me, the truth is is that there is a ton of stuff out there. I'm still passionate about FMA. I believe FMA is the path I've been called to in life, and I have this unwavering belief that I will change the world through it. But, I feel that unless I look outside of that world every once in a while, I won't be able to be the best warrior-leader I can be. A true leader must know himself as well as the people he leads...and the only way for me to know myself is to go out there, and experience the world around me. As a person, as a human being, I need to experience all of the things God has placed on this earth. I would be doing a disservice to Him if I didn't.

Someone special told me something my first week into this trip that I carried in my heart this whole time. She said, "Even if you're scared, just live. We only get one chance at it. Don't be scared...try new things." I did, and even though it was uncomfortable at times, those words alone gave me the strength and inspiration to go out and do new things. Her words led me to one undeniable truth...something that my heart seemed to say silently to me as I went through this trip: Life is, if you want it to be, an adventure. You need to mix it up...keep yourself guessing. In the past month, I haven't done the same exact thing twice. That is something I never thought I'd do. Every week was a different place...a different adventure. I had no choice in the matter. I was thrown into it, and I came out of it with a different experience...a different thing to check off the "To-Do" list of my life.

I will carry the spirit of this trip into my life when I return home. This adventure is not over.