GETTING UNSTUCK: CAN ADVENTURE CHANGE YOUR LIFE?

We all get stuck in dead-end jobs, passionless relationships, and the bitter disappointment of plan gone awry. "Life is what happens while you're making other plans," John Lennon warned us.

So how can we get unstuck and become excited about life again? My life changed dramatically when I decided to recharge with a Big Adventure, on my own. I was in my early thirties on the fast track in corporate America. I'd never done anything more exciting than visit relatives or lay by a resort pool. I was a hardcore workaholic, putting in long hours in a windowless office. Making decent money, but having little fun. Divorced, I shared an apartment in downtown Chicago with a girlfriend. Work, laundry, paying bills, watching TV: This was hardly the adventurous life I dreamed about. So one day, I did something totally crazy. I told my boss I was taking a vacation the next week and called my travel agent.

"Book me on a trip to The Galapagos Islands," I told her.
That's a big deal trip, Sharon," she laughed. "Expensive. You can't just go there last minute."
"Yes, I can," I said. "Please, find me a trip that's going next week," I begged. "Here's my credit card number. Just get me there."

Somehow, she worked a miracle, and the following Monday I was on a live-aboard boat, exploring The Galapagos Islands. Diving with golden sea lions, playing with adorable blue-footed booby birds, scrambling over lava rocks with marine iguanas, I began to feel alive again. I learned that explorer Charles Darwin spent five years on board the "Beagle," discovering the Galapagos. He described the Islands as "eminently curious, and well deserving attention…a little world in itself." His book, On the Origin of Species, took 25 years to write and changed scientific theory on evolution.

Galapagos Island animals deal with isolation, predators, sudden weather changes, and challenges where the animals must change what they eat and where they live. Sound familiar? Despite these obstacles, these animals express extraordinary joy. Why couldn't I? "Marine iguanas have a fascinating adaptation story," my guide Renato Perez told me. "Originally, they lived inland. But as they lost their food sources, they had to change. They learned to swim in the sea, an evolution that took thousands of years. But now, they are master divers, eating algae and crustaceans they catch in the ocean. Look how happy they are."

I got it. When things are no longer working, it's me who has to change. I returned home inspired, determined to find work and relationships that were meaningful to me. If my life was miserable, only I could make it change. Nobody was in charge of my happiness but me. So I got very busy looking for new opportunities and spending time with people who were up, not down, happy not bored. New doors flew open. I was offered opportunities to write travel guidebooks, magazine articles, and to teach creative writing. I met and soon married my soul mate, a photographer who joins me in hiking, skiing, and world travel. We moved to New Mexico, where our friends are schoolteachers, artists, scientists, writers and outdoor lovers; not "contacts and associates" with whom we "networked" back in Chicago.

So whenever anyone asks how I got unstuck from being a bored corporate city slicker and blossomed into a globe-trotting journalist, I suggest they visit any place exotic that's been waiting in the Dreams. For me, it was The Galapagos Islands. For you, it could be your own backyard. Just get out of your rut, do something crazy, find an adventure somewhere. It just might change your life.

By Sharon Lloyd Spence - 2003

Sharon is the author of 7 travel books and contributes to magazines and newspapers worldwide. She is Senior Editor for www.greatestescapes.com and teaches travel writing workshops to anyone with wanderlust. Contact her at: sharonspence@cs.com

The first law of energy or thermodynamics states that, in all physical and chemical changes, energy is neither created nor destroyed, but it may be converted from one form to another. This is a law of science that proves energy is not lost when we die. Energy cannot be destroyed -- just as our life force cannot be destroyed. When we die, the energy we are is simply converted into another form. Many people say that our energy is then operating at a higher frequency or a higher vibrational level. If you consider light that we cannot see, such as ultraviolet or infrared, it is energy operating at a different frequency. It has been measured and proven. I wonder if anybody has ever tried to measure the energy or vibrational level of a person after death or even when in a meditative state? I am sure with the advances of science and technology, we would have the ability to do that. How is our life force different from that of another animal or plant? Maybe we just vibrate at different frequencies. Obviously an animal has a personality; it feels. Even plants feel -- or so it has been suggested.

This ties in with the environment and how we are not separate from it. Rather we are an integral part of it. The key is that we are a PART of it. We are not the most important part. If human beings ceased to exist today, the environment would continue to grow and develop on its own with no problem. As a matter of fact, it would do better without us, than with us. Somehow we need to learn to respect nature and treat it with the reverence it deserves -- just as we are supposed to treat God with reverence. What is nature, but not the very nature of God. When we harm the Earth, we not only harm God, but we harm ourselves at the same time. We are a part of God. Our life force energy is a part of all that is. We are a part of nature. It is essentially all the same. Learning to live within nature harmoniously, we learn to live with ourselves and with God in harmony.

I read an article about a woman who left city life and lived off the land in Montana on a ranch. It was very difficult for her at first. Living off the land was a challenge just to get food. Yet, the most amazing thing is she developed a love relationship with the land. She developed a love relationship with God. She was more at peace with herself than ever before in her life. She got in touch with nature, which got her in touch with God and got her in touch with herself. I'm not saying we should all go live on a ranch in Montana, but there is something troubling with our isolation from nature. The key is to get back in touch with nature in whatever way one can. 

- Fred Bubolz  - 2002
Fred Bubolz is a resident of Wisconsin and has gone back to school
to get a degree in Environmental Science.

WATCH YOUR BUTTS!

It happened again the other day. I was driving along when a twenty-something threw her still-smoldering cigarette butt onto the street. Before the light changed from red to green, my old fantasy had kicked in.

"Excuse me, you dropped something," I say, holding the small, smoking refuse.
"What are you talking about?" Her nose wrinkles. Scorn propels her mouth into a frown.
"This." My eyes have a maniacal glint; I hear the sirens wailing closer. "I think you dropped it."
Within milliseconds, a whole gaggle of lawmen show up. The SWAT team surrounds her car. Firemen yell, then loosen the hose. Water floods through her open window.
She splutters. It's just a cigarette."
"No," I say. "It's a weapon."

I live in drought country. Oblivious smokers kill with their thoughtlessness. The reason my fantasy is so well developed is that I've had many occasions to refine it. The young woman's smoking doesn't spark my response. What flames the fury is her lack of regard for her parched landscape.

From flicking cigarette butts to tailgating, from cheating on a test to corporate greed, our society is witnessing the growth of a skewed, inhuman perspective - one that is cultivated and coddled by our emphasis on the individual over society. I could go on: Rudeness, robberies, murders - all of these stem from me-ness over we-ness.

As a parent, I want to teach my children the interconnectedness of all things. I want them to understand their actions never happen in a vacuum. This isn't some groovy notion, some abstraction. Fact is: A cow died for our steak. A plant was pulled for our carrot soup. A paper thrown on the highway becomes an eyesore.

How do we instill this awareness on a grander scale? Concern for others can't be legislated. Demonstrated love for beauty cannot be a requirement for a high school diploma.

The trick is to remind, to teach people to transcend day-to-day existence, to take a breath and - as I tell my children when they cross the street - to STOP, LOOK and LISTEN.

I'm talking about active appreciation here: art appreciation, music appreciation, environmental appreciation, scientific appreciation, verbal appreciation, starlight appreciation - you name it.

With so much noise in our lives, so much ambient chatter, how can we hear, see, smell, taste, and feel the beauty and wonder I'm advocating? Should we petition President Bush to institute a volunteer Wonder Corps to inflame joy in our lives? Could we persuade Congress to fund an Appreciation Army to fan out through out great country, platoons pointing out the beauty of a luna moth or a cup of finely brewed tea?

It's a nicer fantasy than my angry one. I invite you to join me in give it strength. When next you remember, take a moment to appreciate this incredible world around us. And then share that pleasure with some one else.

Inch by inch, step by step, we might be able to pave a better road from me to we.

By - Pari Noskin Taichert

Pari Noskin Taichert is head of her public relations firm, Bad Girl Press (www.badgirlspress.com) and will have her first novel, The Clovis Incident, released next year.