Writing Myself Home

“Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart, and try to love the questions themselves … Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” – Rainer Maria Rilke‍

In December 2017, when I was 27 years old, I had just landed in El Calafate, Argentina. Though I’d been in Argentina for a year and Patagonia for six months, this was my first time in southern Patagonia.

I was in El Calafate for less than 24 hours — a stopover on my way from Bariloche, the town I’d come to call home in Argentina, to Torres del Paine National Park in Chile.

I checked into my hostel that afternoon, stowed my pack in my dorm, and took an indirect route into town, walking down a dirt road somewhere near Lago Argentino, though the lake was out of sight.

By Patagonia’s standards, it was an unusually calm, tranquil afternoon. An easy, knowing wind and the warm light of an early-summer sun danced a golden duet through the tall grasses to my right.

Inspired by my situation and surroundings — and more so the levity I felt as I wandered, or seemingly floated, down a small hill — I recorded a voice note for no one but myself, something I’ll do in moments where I’m out and can’t quite capture my experience in writing.

‍I’m walking kind of down a back way in El Calafate right now and just thinking. Just kind of having a moment of peace with myself.‍

‍I feel like it’s the first time in a really long time that I’ve had a moment to myself, just walking in a new place. Kind of a break from a lot of things that have been normal to me for a while now, and experiencing something new. Smaller town, slower pace of life. I don’t know. I’m just feeling really at peace for the first time in a while.‍

‍I feel settled in a good way. In my heart. In my soul. With everything that I am. There’s still a lot of fear. Still a lot of unsettling feelings […] but I’m excited for myself. It feels good.‍

There was some indescribable magic in that moment. Something that just kind of clicked and felt right. The words may seem inconsequential, but it’s the feeling of that moment that’s stuck with me.

In more recent years, I’ve recognized this as the moment in which I met myself, in which I really looked myself in the eye and shook hands with myself for the first time. Today, I see it more as the start, or perhaps a continuation, of a series of moments in which I unearthed myself — who I am, what I’m called to, the life I’m here to live.

It was a moment of momentum. Of recognizing that I was on the cusp of change, and choosing to lean into that, rather than away — with courage despite my fear; with a calm, peaceful knowing despite my uncertainty; and listening to my gut despite the voice of worry that spun on and on about everything that could go “wrong.”

I suppose I’ve met myself in ways both big and small in different moments in time. However, this moment — the feeling of this moment — is significant to me.

The more I move through life, the more I realize that I am the architect, cartographer, composer, illustrator, writer of my life.

There’s a knowingness deep within me about who I am, what moves me, and what I desire. I carry the dreams and vision — piece by piece, revealed over time — for my life, and with each step I take, I am learning to trust my inner knowing.

During a guided meditation in February, the following message surfaced in me: “The story I am meant to write is the one I am actively living.” Ever since, I’ve been gently rocking with this, letting it percolate and seep into me.

How do you write the story you’re actively living? Like, how do you write the story while you’re in it? How do you write the story when you can’t yet see the bigger picture, when the beginning, the end, and the threads throughout are still weaving together?

You write it all down now to make sense of it, or not, later.

Be it shared or simply something for myself, journaling is how I make sense of the world around me. Even more so, it’s how I make sense of the world within me.

How do you write the story you’re actively living? How do you move from one word, sentence, paragraph, page, chapter — and even volume — to the next in the book that is your life?

I think the answer lives within the question itself. You move through the story that is your life one word, sentence, paragraph, page, chapter at a time. You move through life one lived experience, one moment, one story at a time.

You document it, as best you can. You document the emotions, the events, the people, the places. You lean into the challenges, and you listen to the moments that tickle a deep and altogether soft and strong knowing throughout you. A radiant, resonant wave.

Today, though still significant, I see that moment in El Calafate as an experience, a moment, a story that’s part of a bigger picture. It’s a square, perhaps central to the design, in my patchwork quilt. It’s part of the bigger picture of my life and story in Patagonia — and that of my life and story in general.

Over time, you notice that the words, sentences, paragraphs, pages, and chapters — these lived experiences, moments, and stories — that you’ve documented are not exclusive or isolated. Over time, you notice that they braid together to form the tapestry of your unique life, a story only you can live, a story only you can tell.

It’s in this way — word by word, sentence by sentence, page by page, chapter by chapter — that I am writing the story I’m actively living. It’s in this way that I am writing myself home.