My life is good. I love my family. I love my work. I love my friends. I love my hometown of Los Angeles. I’ve crafted a life with my partner where we’ve found a way to travel the world and explore other cities, cultures, and ways of life.
My dad had a favorite phrase when it came to how to problem solve in life. There’s more than one way to skin a cat. (Note: He NEVER actually skinned a cat). The most poignant thing I learned while traveling was that he was right. I remember walking up a hill in the ancient city of Fatehpur Sikri, about 45 minutes away from the Taj Mahal in India, following a young man who had unofficially deemed himself our local tour guide. This was before google maps, before iPhones, before international SIM cards. As we followed him up the hill, not really sure what we were even looking for or where we were even going, I realized that the toddlers there appeared different. It hit me like a lightning bolt that I didn’t see any babies or little ones wearing diapers! Sure enough, as we trekked up the hill, a parent held their baby out, arms fully extended, while their baby pooped into the ditch that lined the road. At that moment, there was a certain calm and wonderment that came over me. The fact that civilizations, cultures, communities were orbiting around the same sun, the same moon as me, and yet they had such a different way of doing things, of living their lives, opened up a whole new level of consciousness in my brain. As an American, I felt bred to believe that the American way is not just the way, it’s the only way. Ever since my grandparents took me to Italy when I was 13, I had been bit by the travel bug, but I couldn’t articulate the why. Now I knew why. Because I love seeing all the different ways people live their everyday lives differently from how I do. Because it gives me an opportunity to see the many, many, many ways people skin cats (again, not literally, that would be bad).