to be enlightened

To feel the light touch your skin when you’re in darkness.

To see an abundance of colors and shapes with your eyes closed.

To hear the waves crash and angels sing simultaneously.

To feel enlightened is different for everyone. 

My enlightenment is when my mind is at peace with the world and others surrounding me. When there’s no more suffering inside me and my body is content with its shape and being.

When I can smile at myself and my inner self and know, both are united at last.

the first one

I was sitting in my Academic Advisor’s office when this whole journey started. We were planning my classes for the fall semester in my second year at Binghamton University when she said, “Wow, you have a lot of credits for a freshman. Have you ever thought about graduating early?” No, the thought never crossed my mind. Although I’ve always loved school and learning new things, I never thought I was the student that could finish college early. But low and behold, the AP classes I took in high school and the summer internship I took in Manhattan paid off with 16 credits toward my degree. I already skipped an entire semester of college. I talked through a plan with my advisor; if I took winter and summer classes for the next two years, I could graduate a year early. College in just three years? I was paying for my education myself, so if I didn’t have to pay another $12k out off pocket, or apply to 10+ scholarships for another year, I was in.

But, what would I do in this extra year that I would’ve spent in school? I could start with getting a job, working for a nonprofit in the city, and make money as soon as I could. Or I could do something more worthwhile… what if I traveled for a year? I’ve always dreamed of traveling since I was younger, I’ve always wanted to hop on a train or a plane and explore. I started doing some research and the trip seemed possible. After going to Israel for Birthright the winter before I started making these plans, I knew I wanted to go back and live there for at least a month. But there were so many more countries that intrigued me; I didn’t know where to start! By the time my third year rolled around, I made more plans, booked some flights, and my trip became real. I was really doing this. I was traveling across the world by myself for 6 months.

I stayed in touch with a few people from my Birthright trip and one of them mentioned a program called Onward Israel to me as we were catching up. She did the 2-month internship program the summer after we did Birthright together and was working as a representative for them now – after I applied, I had my interview with her and was approved immediately! The program required a down payment that went towards living in an apartment for 2 months, along with interning at an Israeli company and getting a stipend for food; it was a great deal for what I paid for. The experience was one I will never forget. Not only was this program how I started off my travels abroad, but it was the longest I would be spending in one place. I planned to stay for 2-4 weeks in my other destinations and was traveling by myself, too. But this experience was unlike anything else I’d encounter in the rest of my journey. A few days before I moved in, I found out my apartment was filled with 9 other girls. As I walked through the door, it looked more like a loft than an apartment. My name was on the dining room table, along with a key, and I put my things in the first room I saw. No one else was home but later, I found out that I shared the room with two other girls, strangely reminding me of my life in the dorms back at college.

The whole program felt very structured at first. We had weekly activities that were either about Israeli history, society, politics, etc. or about us – the interns. As much as these activities were informative, some were meant to have us socialize and get to know each other – forcibly. I did connect with a few people on the program, but that took weeks of me becoming comfortable around them. In the beginning I was just around strangers. I didn’t have anything in common with them except for the program we were all on together. Although I spent a lot of time with them and got to know them, there was still a part of me that felt lonely, that truly became homesick. I missed my friends that I recently graduated with, who were all still in the college-town we made so many memories in. I missed my sister, who started a new job and was making strides in her art career in Manhattan. I was starting to miss a lot of people and wondered if I was cut out for living on the other side of the world for the next several months. Luckily, my loneliness subsided as I befriended a few of the girls I lived with. They were the first to show me how genuine friendships can come out of the most unexpected places.

One moment shifted my views on the program, as I got to know one of my roommates, Mina. We had a lot in common from the moment we met – similar music taste, our views on Judaism, our spiritual beliefs, and the difficulties life threw at us when we were too young to heal ourselves properly. I mentioned that I wanted to go to the Western Wall one morning on Shabbat because I haven’t gone since Birthright and wanted to recognize the holiday in the most holy place on Earth. Shabbat, or the Sabbath, is the day of rest for Jews. From sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, Israel has everything closed for 24 hours – grocery stores, shopping centers, most restaurants, etc. – to ensure that everyone is resting, or keeping Shabbos. The people on my program, all being Western 20-somethings, were always looking to make plans and find something to do together on Shabbat, but not a lot of people were religious. Mina and I bonded over the fact that we didn’t think of ourselves as very religious, but we did see ourselves as spiritual Jews. She agreed to come with me to pray at the Western Wall on Saturday morning and the experience was completely different than the last time I was there. We walked from our apartment in Rehavia (a neighborhood in Jerusalem) to the Old City. It wasn’t until we entered through the old Yellowstone arch that we realized we were not going anywhere near the entrance of the Western Wall. Google maps isn’t the best for taking you to the exact location in a place like Jerusalem’s Old City, and instead of trying to find signs to tell us where to go, we were millennials that trusted Google would get us there in no time. Eventually, we put our phones away, trusted our instincts, and wandered around the different quarters of the Old City until we found the signs pointing to the Kotel, or the Wailing Wall in Hebrew. 

We entered through the Jewish quarter and found the entrance for women, since there are sections for men, women, and an egalitarian section which is where I went during Birthright. But being surrounded by other Jewish women of various origins and sects of Judaism was comforting. I felt like I belonged and followed Mina to get a prayer book, find a table to open to Hebrew prayers, and start to pray. It was overwhelming. Anyone who has been to the Kotel knows, the feeling you get when you are in front of a wall that large, with so much history and meaning behind it. It’s a feeling like no other. My heart started to ache and tears were streaming down my face as I spoke to G_d and connected with myself again. I looked over at Mina and she was sitting, eyes watering, deep in thought looking into her prayer book. We made eye contact and went to touch the wall, finish our prayers, and walked backwards to put our prayer books away and head home.

Getting out of the Kotel wasn’t difficult but we realized that we came out of the furthest exit from the direction we needed to go back to Rehavia – 40 minutes of walking in the sunny, 90+ degree weather that Israeli summers are known for. We decided to stop in a park on the way back to lay down, relax, and take off our layers of modest clothing. The stop in the park and walk back to our apartment was when Mina and I truly became friends. We opened up to each other about the most personal subjects, shared childhood stories with each other, and realized that we both needed each other that summer. She helped me remember how incredible my life was when I’d feel lonely or upset about missing home. Although the program we were on was completely different from how I wanted my travels to start off, it still brought me this incredible, strong, compassionate, and loving friend that I never would’ve met otherwise. It was hard saying goodbye knowing that she lives in Indiana, a far trip from New York, but I know our paths will cross again. 

After leaving my life in Jerusalem and starting my journey as a solo traveler, there were moments that I missed my friends I made in Onward Israel. I was only an hour away from my home in Rehavia when I went to my next long-term destination in a city in the West Bank called Ramallah, also known as the capital of Palestine. I spent a month working at a hostel in the center of the city and rarely felt lonely at this point of my trip, mainly because the people that surrounded me were some of the most genuine and kind people I’ve met. Working a hostel was an experience on its own but the fact that I was constantly surrounded by people, whether it was guests or other volunteers, was something I enjoyed getting used to. Like the friends I made during Onward Israel, I found my core group of friends at the Hostel in Ramallah too – Fanny, Caleb, and Carina. We all arrived around the same time, in the beginning of September, and over the weeks we spent cleaning, helping guests, and taking our days off to travel around the West Bank, we grew really close. Although I loved spending time with each and every one of them, I wanted to take a trip to the north of the region and had to do it on my own – I craved alone time towards the end of my 4 weeks of volunteering. Every week I’d get one day off, which I didn’t use until my last week there, so I planned a trip for 4 days to go to 3 cities in the North: Tiberias, Nazareth, and Haifa. 

Unfortunately, the days I chose to leave Ramallah and head into Israel was the same day as Sukkot, one of the many Jewish holidays Israel recognizes and similar to how it handles Shabbat – everything is closed. Since Sukkot lasts 7 days and Israel can’t close everything down for a week, the first day is treated like Shabbat while the remaining 6 days are left to be celebrated after sundown, most places close early and buses run less frequently. My travels became delayed and frustrating at times when I had to take the bus to travel to the different cities, spending at least a couple hours each way. On my way from Tiberias to Nazareth, I needed to transfer buses on the highway and did my long-term traveling at night so I could sleep on the bus and spend the whole day in the city. During this time I didn’t have any data left on my Israeli cell phone plan, so I needed to load directions on my phone while I had Wi-Fi at the hostel in Tiberias. Unfortunately, the first bus I took was running late so by the time I had to transfer to the next bus, I was late for the time Google maps told me. I couldn’t load the schedule to see when the next bus was coming (due to the lack of data) but I knew it would take some time because of Sukkot.

So here I am, me and my backpack, on the shoulder of a highway. At 9:30pm. In northern Israel. I kept looking at the screen above me, waiting for my bus number to pop up and eventually I see it, “431 – 47 mins.” I laughed. How do I keep myself occupied for 47 minutes? I couldn’t read my book, it was too dark to see anything. I was listening to music at the time and no one was around me, so I popped one earbud out of my ear, put on my “Billie Eilish: Complete Collection” playlist on Spotify, and started to sing. I’ve loved to sing since I was a child, I would even get yelled at for humming at the dinner table too much. Music and singing are things I couldn’t live without, and whenever I need to cheer myself up, I start to sing. I sang my heart out as cars zoomed past me in the dead of night. I started with “idontwannabeyouanymore,” then “COPYCAT,” then “party favor,” over and over. I was shameless of the drivers that might’ve seen my body language as I got more intense with my performance. It got to a point when the cars were almost like an audience, their headlights were like stage lights. After going through the playlist a couple times and singing the same songs at the top of my lungs, I checked the sign: “431 – 6 mins.” I’ve been singing for more than a half hour and it felt like nothing! I can’t remember the last time I had the chance to sing completely carefree – no time restrictions, no fear of someone walking in on me, no interference. This unexpected inconvenience was a shift in my solo travels. It made the time by myself go from lonely and boring to refreshing and entertaining. No matter who I took that little trip to the north with, it wouldn’t have been the same if I wasn’t alone.

In October, I got on a flight to Poland and in the following 2 months, there were times I felt lonely – but I could handle it more gracefully than how I would’ve in the middle of June. There were times when I wished for a friend I could explore an unknown part of the city with. After meeting new people day in and out, I started to dismiss the small talk and craved a deep conversation with a friend over dinner. This is when I became grateful for traveling in the 21st century where my closest friends were just a phone call away. If I ever had a day of feeling lonely, I could easily find a place with Wi-Fi and call my sister or my best friend. It’s important to have a few people you can always call while traveling solo. Although the time difference was tricky, it was a constant part of my routine to have people I cared about still be there for me. I knew they couldn’t be there physically, but they kept me company when the loneliness took over my mind.

As much as I am a social person, I appreciated my alone time more and more as I traveled by myself. Growing up, I identified as an extrovert – I was the one who got scolded by the teacher because I was always talking to my classmates. I love talking, I love people, but there’s also a comfort I found with being by myself. Traveling gave me the opportunity to release my inner introvert. When I was going to school, I juggled two jobs, maintained a social life and went to the gym daily, never having time to stop and think about myself. Having all the time in the world to listen to my thoughts and recognize my feelings – that’s where I found bliss. My stress became alleviated when I could wander around cities by myself, walk into shops I found interesting, and sit at the bar of a restaurant to read, or converse with the waiters and other strangers eating by themselves. Meeting other people while traveling was one of my favorite parts of traveling by myself, but it did get exhausting at times. When staying at hostels every week, meeting new people constantly, you hear the same questions with the same basic replies,

“Where are you from?”                          “Wow, New York!”

“What made you want to come here?”              “Oh, I came for vacation”

“How long are you here for?”               “I’m here for x days”

“Did you go to the ‘blah blah blah’ yet?”           “You must try to go! It’s so beautiful!”

But there were times when the conversation would stray from the basics and I made a connection with someone. Whether it was with a fellow traveler or a local, I could spend a whole day with someone instead of being by myself and wandering alone. There were times when I did want to be alone and rejected some dinner invitations because I started to crave my alone time. I never would’ve been able to truly enjoy myself if I was traveling for months with another person, or a group of people. I would probably grow tired of them.

I suppose I like traveling by myself because I have more freedom. I have opportunities to learn more about the culture and the people that are surrounding me in this new place I’m discovering, day by day. I began my journey abroad with a Google document of itineraries for each country I went to. I would add to the lists as my time in the destinations got closer, but as time went on, I used these dense itineraries as lists of goals instead. I became more relaxed with letting my body go where it wanted to go, regardless of the tourist attractions or places other people told me to go to. The list helped me when I was bored of an area or wanted to do something more entertaining, but it didn’t make me feel anxious or rushed that I needed to do anything. Traveling alone was one of the best decisions I made for my journey abroad. Yes, loneliness happens, but it goes away.

Four years ago, I never would’ve expected myself to be where I am today. Sitting in my apartment in Brooklyn, reflecting on my travels abroad where I lived out of a backpack for 6 months. Those months were life changing and I’ll never be the same after everything I experienced. I walked through crowded streets of Palestine, roamed around the Old Town of Warsaw, and got lost in a small Spanish village, all on my own. Being alone is so powerful. It forces you to see parts of yourself that only you can bring out. By taking in everything you’ve experienced, incredible things can happen in your mind. You replay the moments and remember the small things that make your heart race again. I’ve learned to be my happiest self without any company. Happiness can come to you in the most unexpected ways, but if there’s anything I learned after my trip is that chasing your dreams is important. Whatever fuels your fire, whatever you feel passionate about, make that your life. You won’t regret it.

Motovun - Croatia (by Erin Johnson) 

Entering a new year, a new age

In just a few days I’ll be transitioning into my 22nd year of life. This past year has given me so much, and although I haven’t written about it very much, I’m going to tell my stories throughout this new year. I’ve encountered countless feelings and emotions I never dealt with before. I felt lonely, I felt pure joy, I felt sadness, I felt lucky and saw fate work in the weirdest ways. I have more to encounter but I’m hoping this journey of writing about my past will unleash something in my present.

flowers

indie

vintage

alternative

interior

tea time

garden

details

Curitiba, Brazil | Keilor de Aviz

Biking like a true Dutch