Why am I on an Island?

I am a bellydancer who just left her sequins at her home in New York City to make a new home on an island. I was accustomed to eating dinner out at restaurants every night and now I am going to have to gather my supper. I had a beautiful Brownstone with a dreamy bed that had Egyptian cotton 800 thread count sheets and now I am going to sleep on the ground.  I had great friends that I spent most of my time with and now I am going to be alone with no one to talk to, but my boyfriend. Why?

Since arriving, everyone asks us the same question: How long is your vacation? In NYC, before I left, everyone asked the same question: Where are you traveling on your vacation? I tell them this is NOT a VACATION. It is an experiment, a journey and an adventure that I am taking for an entire year. A vacation is something you do when you a take a break, an escape from work, for R&R and possibly to learn about a different culture.

Then EVERYONE asks, “Why?”  I think they secretly want to take a year off, too.

I want more than just taking a year off. I am not simply sick of my job. I want to know my life’s purpose.  I do know that life isn’t about working a job, or getting straight A’s in school or even being an artist. Life is learning to be authentically yourself and being the best you that you could be, allowing your inner light to shine. Life is being aware of your weaknesses and learning to grow within these limitations. It’s about learning your strengths and how to breathe within them. It’s about finding the path that is yours to follow and seeing the signs that you are on the right path. Life is about finding what is your gift to give to this world – and finding the best way to share it with society.

I have much to learn from society. This is precisely why I feel the urgency to be away from civilization in order to find my place in humanity. I need to be away from any of the pressures to do, to accomplish, to succeed. No one creates a larger burden on myself than myself. I want to remove the external ways that I used to prove that I was special. I need to be away from the ego I had in NYC to see what lies beneath.  I need to be submerged in nature to hear that voice.

In NYC, I got a befuddled look: aren’t you going to be bored?  I told them I had no idea, but I was willing to find out. I told them it was worth the risk to get the answers to the questions I have about the meaning of life, specifically, the meaning of my life.

The questions continued, with most people perplexed with our plans of “roughing it”. It’s true; we have abandoned certain luxuries and comforts of New York City life.  But the sacrifices that one makes to live the so-called “good life” are too GREAT! Most of us spend our lives working at a job we loath only to get by, sometimes never realizing what our true gift or contribution to society is. We work to acquire stuff and become slaves to our possessions. I truly believe THAT is the ROUGH LIFE.

I WANT TO LIVE BY MY PHILOSOPHIES! But first I need to find out what I believe. These are my goals on my great adventure:

1) To learn lessons about life from nature. In nature, everything is perfect. Everything. We will watch how everything is connected and follow its voice. Live in harmony in nature, not creating the mounds of garbage, which I do even when I consume a frozen yogurt.  That disturbs me! Eating only what I can gather, kill, completing the cycle of life.

2) Knowing that what I believe comes completely from what I have learned. Separate my beliefs from what I have believed because other believed it, specifically my parents.

3) Knowing how to truly communicate. What good is technology when I cannot communicate effectively because I don’t know what I am feeling or how to express it?

4) To find my purpose in life, my path, my reason for being, my raison d entre.

5) Live fearlessly and authentically.