My wanderlust often brings me to places… and in some special occassions, it brings me to a place where I will meet amazing people. Call it coincidence or whatever you want to call it, but I believe that in our most epic journey called life, we meet people that will teach us a lesson or two (or vice versa). And last weekend I met two old souls that taught me lessons that I’ll always remember.
I met a couple, Mr. M, a 48 year old Belgian guy and a 50 year old Filipina, Ms. K who works as a volunteer in Belgium. It was just a sheer coincidence that I met them in a restaurant down south. They’re here for a six month vacation. After that, they’ll fly back and work and then travel again on the next winter.
They’ve been married for 17 years and they met in an unusual place.
Lesson #1: “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” -Dr. Seuss
Mr. M met Ms. K in a night club in Puerto Galera. Ms. K wasn’t ashamed to admit her past even to strangers like me. She wasn’t afraid of being judged anymore because whatever happened in the past happened already and she couldn’t change it anymore. What she can change is her present and her future.
After their meeting, they’ve become inseparable until the time that they’ve decided to get married and relocate to Belgium. Since then, she tried to revive her other passion in life which is reading. She loves books and she reads a lot. She also gained a lot of new friends, a lot of new Filipino friends in Belgium.
One day she has decided to share the story of her life… Mr. M warned her not to do it. But she insisted, she told her friends about her “dark past” and most of them left her except for three friends.
The three friends who stayed by her side and Mr. M don’t mind her past because she matters a lot to them.
Lesson #2: “There’s no answer to the question of life because there’s no question to begin with.”
I was shocked to hear this sentence from Mr. M. He said he realized this when he was 18 years old so technically that was three decades ago.
This sentence is exactly what popped into my head on my last day in a temple in Chiang Mai. I stayed in a temple for seven days to study meditation, or rather, to seek refuge to my fragile self.
Most of us seek the ultimate truth. A lot have already died seeking, I’m not even sure if they found the answer. I don’t have the answer either and I know I will die without finding it out.
Maybe it’s human instinct to search for our purpose of existence. Deep inside your guts you want to know why you’re here, you want to know what you need to do, you want to know something that words cannot even explain. I’m just as the same.
Until the day I realize that I should just stop asking questions about life and just live it and experience it fully, because regardless of what you do, life will go on. It will also stop on its own time and there’s nothing that you can do about it.
This is the beauty of travelling. More than seeing the grandeur of the Taj Mahal or the Eiffel Tower, it’s about learning about life. It’s like an awakening from a deep slumber.
“For every place that I go to and for every person that I meet along the way, I realize a piece of me.”
This is my entry to the September Blog Carnival hosted by Marky Ramone Go of Nomadic Experiences on the topic “Unforgettable Human Encounters on the Road”.
Photo Credits: Pic by Frameless World
Candidly, I am deeply touched by your post. Stories like that of M and K are really life-awakening. Your views on the matter are inspiring.
and to add to that… stories like them abound… sometimes we dont need to travel that far to learn…
honestly, when we’re traveling we forget our past for a while, and we only look forward to present. when we’re traveling, we are all the same. there’s no rich, there’s no poor. the hell with the past! i love this kind of post, honest and very touching! Nice one, buddy!
that’s what i like as well with travelling… there’s this feeling (real or not) that all of you are equal…
I’ll forever remember the second lesson. There’s no question at all to begin with so why do we need to find an answer?..
If there is.. “answers are everywhere, we’ll just have to find the right question”.. – got this from our college retreat..
the answers are everywhere… we just ignore them… thanks for sharing
Very inspiring story…. You are a good writer
thanks abby… i tried to narrate the story to the best of my abilities… dami pa nilang na share aside from the two things that i mentioned…
wow. masyado namang introspective at reflective ang post na to. mapapag-isip ka bigla kahit ayaw ko eh oh. hehehe. basta’t yun nga sabi mo, mag enjoy nlang tayo!
tama… just enjoy and stop worrying… ang lagi nga nyang sabi… que sera sera… what will be will be
hehe
indeed flip, learn and appreciate LIFE is more than the beauty of what we see in our travels.
i think life’s purpose are given, some people just want to copy others’ purpose, kaya nagkaka-problema.
for me, it is to enjoy life, live to the fullest!
live life to the fullest… cheers to that james
Aside from beauty of the places that we visit when we travel, it’s the people we meet along the way that make it memorable and fun,
indeed… everything that i remember vividly about my travels are the people that i met along the way :-0
Good read! That’s one of the great perks of traveling. To meet other like minded people. I love running into strangers on my trips and I often keep in touch with them.
Hope you’ll be one of those ‘strangers’ flip!
hope to see you and chin on the road… enjoy your trip… looking forward to your india chronicles…
I admit that traveling is a passion but it also takes a whole lot of pressure – on work, finances, relationships. Sometimes we want to get away from it all only to come back facing the realities of the world we live in. Now I try to balance my time – a time for myself and a time for everything else.
so true dennis, i think what travelling makes me feel is freedom…thats why as of now im trying to earn online so i could work anywhere i want.. but its difficult.. but im willing to try…
You raise a good point in that travel isn’t only about locations. It can also be about the people you meet. I know I’ve met a lot of interesting people on my trips and often they’ll make as big impressions on me as the place I’m traveling through. Stories like this are really life-affirming. Thanks for sharing it.
I remember reading this post before and it still strikes a chord into the consciousness, the realness of the couple you met and their gung ho attitude bout life is really something. Yes, people makes up more than half of our travel experiences.
parang naalala ko to, pero bakit wala akong comment dito? hehe
so true, the stories of the people you met make the trip more memorable.
touched my heart while reading this. true, very true. it’s not the place that makes the travel memorable, it’s the people that we’re with and the people that we meet. and from them, we see how beautiful life really is. this post inspired me to join the blog carnival
sali na
it’s a great feeling how random people we meet on the road can bring so much more lesson in life we don’t expect to hit us right smack on the face! and boom…we are awakened! cool post!
Thanks for sharing this Flip I agree with you, our journey isn’t just about the road, but the people along that road. We learn and we inspire people.