Never Settle: Motorcycle Diaries Meditations

The future. When is this not on the mind of all millennials my age? We cannot make a coffee date, go to a networking event, send an email, or update a Facebook status without thinking about how it will impact our future. It is tiring and exciting at the same time. What other generation had as many options as we do now? Freedom to switch our career every few years to challenge ourselves; the ability to work and live internationally; the possibility of forever seeking and gaining more education and knowledge; an on-going process to dream-up better futures for ourselves and the generations that follow. But with this freedom comes expectations that are sometimes unrealistic. We are expected to find a “dream career” that fulfills us, and pays well, and allows us to grow. We are expected to leave a position behind after 2-3 years because chances are we have learned what we needed to from that experience, and the next step will challenge us further. There is no comfort of “settling in” to anything-to a job, a geographic location, a lifestyle. We are a generation that is moving constantly, that is afraid of commitment, of settling down, of investing in something consistent. Yes, this lifestyle of change and new opportunities is thrilling and exciting, but also daunting and full of uncertainties.

There isn’t a day that I do not think about next year: my next chance to take an intentional step towards developing into the person I want to be. Of course, that is another constant question-who do I want to be? What do I want to accomplish? What issue do I want to focus on? What makes me fulfilled and gives me creative liberties and fits a million other criteria that I want in my “dream life” right now? This afternoon, a perfect rainy and stormy Sunday afternoon for a movie, I cuddled up with my blanket, and a few roommates, to watch Motorcycle Diaries. Aside from the transcendental and spiritually calming soundtrack by Gustavo Santaollala (also of Babel and Brokeback Mountain), I knew nothing about the journey this movie would cause my roommates and I to start pondering.

The story follows two young men, a doctor and a biochemist, as they begin an epic pilgrimage from Buenos Aires in 1952 and travel through Latin America. With their few belongings, and a beat-up motorcycle, they leave to discover what the world offers outside of the redundancy of clinics and studies; they embark on this sojourn to live, to learn about the other cultures around them, to meet women (of course), and eventually to serve at a leper colony in Peru. During the journey we see into the philosophical reflections of “Che,” who at the age of 24 is just learning about his lifelong calling of uniting Latin America. At one point he poses the questions, “What do we leave behind when we cross each frontier? Each moment seems split in two; melancholy for what was left behind and the excitement of entering a new land.”

Through these musings and discoveries, I found myself asking similar questions: what do I want to get out of the next year of life? What are my passions, my calling, my aspirations? It also awakened a slightly dormant desire for travel, though only dormant because of my limited monetary means this year. I will never tire of seeing new places, meeting new people, learning about different cultures. I want to explore not only geographically, but also introspectively. I strongly believe that you learn more about yourself through travel and experiencing different cultures.

I will end with this quote with which Che closed the film: “Wandering around our America has changed me more than I thought. I am not me any more. At least I'm not the same me I was.” To me that is the point of growing-up: finding all of the "me's" that I can and will be.

Below are some pictures from our LVC Fall Retreat in Hyde Park a couple weekends ago. Enjoy!