On adventure, anxiety and acceptance

Currently, I am sitting in an air-conditioned internet place, keeping up with the world of people and things- from where I have been, the folks at home, to where I am going- next Guatemala?

While I am doing this, my husband is climbing around inside a very large, very dark cave filled with Mayan artifacts and crystallized human remains.

This leaves me a full day to wash my clothes by hand, meander the Saturday market buying jewellery made of Guanacaste seeds and tropical fruit, and linger in a travelers cafe reading and writing. Taking it easy, at least by all appearances.

Lift the lid a little from what seems an ideal Saturday abroad and you will start to see the various parts of me squirming, quietly pondering the conundrum of anxiety versus adventure (i.e. caves versus internet cafes) and the niggling question of "What is my purpose here?" which pops up every few days and attempts to undermine my efforts at being the 'laid back-fiction reading-restaurant eating-tour taking-housekeeping receiving-traveling gal' I am trying to be. Geez!

Now I don't altogether resent these niggling questions, and in all fairness I would rather be entertaining them than not. In fact, the by product of these persistent questions is a hefty amount of reflectiveness- albeit not tremendously comfortable reflection- about the nature of myself, the world and my self's place in the world (which you all know I secretly love).

The truth is:
I am an anxious person. I am someone who likes to think about adventure, but can get pretty spooked when I get close to it. I want to embrace more of my nature-loving, bird watching, river swimming, jungle hiking self. I feel like I "should" be more courageous, risk taking and ballsy (if that is even how you spell that!). I am afraid, not so much that I will regret not exploring dark caves and human remains, but that the world will be disappointed by my fearfulness and therefore I will make demands on myself beyond my real desire to fulfill them. I am afraid that my fearfulness is shrinking my life unnecessarily and that I am allowing it to.

I want to honour and accept myself for who I really am, whoever that is.

As such, I find myself curiously interrogating other travelers, watching them in action, listening for themes in how they travel, where they go and most importantly how they negotiate the adventure of being in the unknown. I think in doing this I am trying to place myself in the unspoken "Hierarchy of The Traveler". Where do I fall into the varied landscape of bumblers, tour junkies, volunteers, beer drinkers, vagabonds, resort goers, Rastafarians, hippies, adrenaline junkies, retirees and families? What is my place of belonging in the ever changing sea of "passers through"?

What are my ways to connect,
to both the edges in myself and the people I meet there?

To see where Lee has been, visit: (www.belizex.com/tunichil_muknal.htm)