Living a Process, Instead Of Chasing A High

I look back on  my years of travel fondly. 

Whenever I meet a young person who mentions that they want to travel, I light up and start speaking with as much enthusiasm as the situation allows.

“YES. DO IT.” 

I hope that my wide eyes, short sentences and unflappable conviction will convey the fact that I have been in their shoes. I hope that within those three words, they can sense that I have traversed worlds.

I know that when someone is 20, there aren’t many people who will encourage them to travel. 

Chances are, their parents won’t. Teachers won’t. 

It will be people like me — people who took wild chances and left the get-a-good-job paradigm to ride buses across Africa — who will encourage them to travel. 

Theories Of Living

However,  I now look back on those years of travel and I can see that they were based on a particular a Theory of a Good Life. 

My theory for living was “do what you love” and it put me on a perpetual search for the high that comes from travel and doing new jobs often. 

Over the last few years of living in Toronto and working, I can see how narrow that theory was. Purpose in life can’t be simplified into one strategy. There are dozens of factors that make up a full life.

Sometimes doing what I love in one moment is secondary to learning a skill that I also want to develop. 

Sometimes my curiosity to answer a nagging question trumps doing what I love. So I sacrificed travel to enrol in a 4-year Masters of Divinity program. 

There are countless skills to learn and areas to grow in life, and it can’t be simplified into one theory: “doing what you love.”  

When I was traveling constantly, building an online brand, picking up new creative projects every few months, I was “doing what I love,” but if I’m honest with myself, I was also chasing a high. 

Being a 7, but not controlled by my 7

My top enneagram type is a 7 (followed by a 4 and 1). The 7 is the enthusiast, the one who gets excited about stuff! The 4 is the one who feels emotions acutely. So when I was traveling I was riding a double high from my 7 and 4 tendencies and I assumed that was the best way to live. 

Coming back to Toronto, there are still plenty of exciting things, but it’s certainly not as brain-stimulating as waking up in Paris two days after wrapping up a project in Spain. 

Discovering my enneagram type two years ago has helped me to see myself more clearly and give myself permission to grow. A wise enneagram teacher of mine spoke about how the enneagram is more like a hypnotic strategy (instead of a personality type that we’re stuck with). It’s a strategy that we develop as a young person to navigate the world, but as we grow and mature we can become more well rounded.

What does it look like for me to keep the gifts of my 7 and my 4, but to evolve into a more mature version of myself? 

That’s the question I’ve been writing about all these years, since 2018 when I came back. Every time I wrote about trying to embrace my life in the city, I was grieving the loss of what I “loved” as I created space for a new version of Anita to emerge. 

Finally, that a-little-bit-wiser, calmer, grounded, whole Anita is beginning to emerge.  I can feel her.  I’m meeting her everyday that I wake up, and there is no more resentment or bitterness about the life of travel that I no longer live.  I hear her in the voice that whispers, patience, as I wait for my hair to grow back to full length. I notice her in the way I find delight in the butter on my toast.

She is here, fully here.

 There are parts of my character and personality that are changing as I sit and wait, as I submit myself to a process. 

Instead of chasing a high, my Philosophy For Living has now become Submitting To A Process. 

Choosing The Process

Like a new Mac OS update that will take 55 minutes to install, I am sitting in a container that is several years wide. For the first year or two I was back in Toronto, I was rather disoriented.  I didn’t know how to integrate these two seemingly opposing philosophies for living.

But now, I feel like I have past the half way point. And I have. I have passed the halfway point of my Mdiv program. I have entered into my thirties. I trust myself not to chase highs anymore.  I know the wisdom of staying put, of waiting for the process to finish. The system download is taking effect.

One word used to describe this process in Christian circles in sanctification. As I surrender my personal desires to a Power much wiser and omnipotent than me, it is changing me, making me more holy.

I can now approach my life with a reverence, awe, and profound respect for all the holiness that is around me and within in. 

And so, I walk and I sit and I wait.

I keep waking up, and it’s still Toronto but it’s okay now. It is even good.

I remind myself everyday that something, Someone, is changing in me.  If I slow down and listen (and write), I can detect the subtle shifts. There is more hope. Freedom, but a different kind. Clarity. Trust. Confidence. Solidity. 

A new Anita is being born, and I am her.


Infinite Love,
Anita