“The real voyage of discovery consists not of seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” – Marcel Proust
Dear friends,
Our journey made (again) a surprising change in the past few weeks.
Since about a week Bram and I are back in the Netherlands, in our cozy apartment in Groningen. While we tried to find rest near the ocean in Tuscany a few weeks back, it took us but a few days to realize that we could not find the rest we needed while traveling. We had no clue how long it would take us to recover, and we started to seriously worry about our health status. Our priority became clear: taking care of our bodies and choosing for a surrounding where we could ask for medical help if we would need it.
So we took off, heading towards Germany. Luckily, my parents were on vacation, giving us the opportunity to stay in their house for one week. At that moment, we still were in a kind of inner battle, hoping that we would miraculously feel better after a few days of rest there and find a way of continuing traveling, in one way or another. After we were examined by a doctor with no alarming results, we finally allowed ourselves to feel our tiredness and exhaustion and really rested for a few days.
While our systems calmed down, we both experienced more inner clarity. Also, our inner battle, the opposing inner parties seemed to have surrendered. It was quite magical to experience how having a physical base again opened up an inner space, from where we could see more clearly what our needs were.
We realized that returning to our home does not mean that this journey has to end. Clearly, our idea to travel Europe within this year, visiting different communities, will not continue as planned. But our mission, to gather inspiration and find, for us, the appropriate form and the right place to live in, will continue. Given the many answers that we already found to our questions in the last months, among others that we want to live near the German-Dutch border, we can keep investigating from here. While resting our bodies, processing the last intense months and enjoying our save home.
We aim to summon up the answers that we found for ourselves and our main insights regarding different ways of community living in the coming weeks.
You will hear from us!
Warm regards,
Bram and Miriam