Argentina on Motorcycles

Journal thoughts -  revelations on discomfort, definition and a malleable identity.  

  I am planning a motorcycle trip through Argentina.  I want to find an old motorcycle in Buenos Aries, and ride it down through the valleys of Patagonia.   Traverse the outer reaches of South American civilization, mountains and obscurity.    Taking a small backpack, a sturdy camera, and leather journal.     A trip that is not refined or rooted in certainty..   driven simply by the clarity of the heart.  Open-ended.     I don't want to rely on comfort, I don't want to rely on safety.    I want to be pressed into a different shape.   I want to expose new identities of myself  - sheering back the definition and the idea of me.   Not a new version of myself..  but a larger version.  

I believe that experiences that cause us to be uncertain..  that challenge us,  that are neither easy nor inviting..   these are the sort of adventures we should be participating in.     Every time I encounter a adventure that is beyond my scope and my comfort level...  I move into an identity that I did not previously comprehend or know.   I am larger.    My mind, my heart and my self take up more space.  

I believe we are constantly either assigning ourselves a singular new identity,  or defending the identity that we have built for ourselves.    I see very few people who are clear and confident being "identity-less"  -   not to say that they do not know themselves..   but in the way that they have not grafted themselves into a specific identity.    

 I believe It is the routine of our self-driven identity that chokes us out.  

It is the obedience to our own monument that restricts our "becoming".

We are whatever we've decided that we are.   We fit the role,  we obey the context of that description.

And that description often leaves no room for another identity.  

When we uphold our own identity..   we no longer have to be uncomfortable,  we no longer are pressed and molded by ideas or struggles that we perceive as needless or contrary to our identity.    When we say, "here I am" -  "this is my identity"..  we take ourselves out of the vast, wild, bewilderment of becoming great.    We stop learning and start "describing" ourselves in regards to who we believe we should be.

But I believe these struggles... the ones that have no context in the description of our self,    those are the ones that will benefit us the most.      

Continual relearning...  undermining that response to cling and become a thing... an idea..  a particular persona.    Someone we can affirm - someone that our external world can affirm.   

Take adventures to places that frighten your identity.  

  Literally, metaphorically, emotionally.    

Do it.   

Andrew Tipton