A journey around the world?
A journey around the world, Yes But Why?
A search for meaning? An escape? A need freedom?
A new start? A dream?
This summer afternoon when everything was changing
July 2018 – Kailua – Hawaii
On a hot afternoon, I relax in the shade of the lanai (patio in Hawaiian) and leaf through a travel magazine.
An article entitled “Navigating around the world tickets” suddenly caught my attention: AROUND THE WORLD. These three words resonate in my head: around the world… I repeat them mentally, around the world: A WORLD TOUR!
And there I close my eyes, my thoughts accelerate and fly over the globe. Images scroll one after the other, I can already see myself in Bora Bora with my paddle board…
To give a new meaning to my life
In an instant the answer to my existential questions had just appeared there in front my eyes: a long term journey.
Because yes, I have to respond to an approaching void, a void that worries me, a void that paralyzes me: “empty nest” as they say in the United States.
For 21 years, I have been a full-time mom. For all these years, my children have been my reason for living, the reason why I get up every morning. But my mother’s career is coming to an end. My eldest son Julien went to study in San Francsico. This is the year of the Bac for my last “little one” and in a year Edward will have left the house. Staying alone at my apartment in Paris, I just can’t imagine…
This world tour, this long journey is the only possibility … With this strength and this evidence that I cannot help but hear it.
Life sends small signs continuously, you just have to know how to see them, welcome them and interpret them. I decided to hear them, listen to them and live them.
Escape from this “Parisian life”
Which for me turns out to be empty today.
And yet I use to love this Parisian life, these hanging out, these parties … And ultimately a void.
Yes, I am running away from these superficial relationships.
I run away from a work routine.
I have a sore back from sitting on an office chair, my head hurts from having my eyes glued to a screen, I make a hypodermic reaction to spreadsheets and figures, I waste away being locked up under a neon for only sun. I dream of the great outdoors …
I flee this daily stress that weighs on me, I flee this ambient greyness.
I flee this pollution, which suffocates my head as much as my lungs. I’m not breathing anymore, I’m choking …
I need to see the horizon.
To give me time and find a way to myself: I need to take a break, I need to do an image freeze, I need to stand back.
I want to turn the page…
And write this new chapter of my life.
Because I always dreamed of it
From my childhood, the stories of great travelers, the stories of explorers and sea adventurers have always fascinated me. These inaccessible characters made me dream and travel. Through the pages blackened with ink, I have traveled around the world and crossed the seas without leaving my bedroom.
Little girl on vacation at my grandparents home I remember this big book with a faded blue cover: the album of world stamps from my grandfather.
Well aligned on the yellowed pages, variegated uniforms, animals with unpronounceable names, sacred monuments… These stamps from Indochina, Cochinchina, these exotic-sounding regions that have disappeared today fascinated me. My imagination developed by flying over these past colored maps.
Because it’s the right time
This long journey that I always dreamed of, I never thought that one day, I could do it, I could leave and live my own adventure.
This is by no means to consider myself an adventurer, but that voice is there that rumbles in me, that voice that resonates deep within me, that voice that comes out of my gut. This call to travel never leaves me.
“SUP around the world” was born, this project now haunts my thoughts… my days, as my nights.
This trip has become my reason for living, my destination, my lover.
At the end of August 2018, I return to France and I’m decided. I feel an incredible strength and confidence exploding in me. My life has to change and this dream, I have to realize it!
After all these months spent asking myself thousands of questions, gathering tons of information, calculating the budget, studying maps, defining the route to organize this trip,
it’s time to take off…
« LIFE IS SHORT, LIVE YOUR DREAM AND WEAR YOUR PASSION. »
Follow me on social media, share and write me from time to time, it could be worth more than what you can imagine …
… When you spend hours paddling and you’re on the other side of the world.
Aloha
Follow me on social media, share and write me from time to time, it could be worth more than what you can imagine …
… When you spend hours paddling and you’re on the other side of the world.
Aloha
