“I am still a new ship at sea. I don’t know yet that the stars are my map and the clouds on the horizon are not necessarily rain. But I am listening and getting better. My eyes are so full of wonder I can hardly see where to step.”
How would you most enjoy to spend your life, if money was no object? If you could go anywhere and do anything, how would you spend your time? We believe the most influential and world-changing people are the ones who discover their purpose and have the bravery to follow it without hesitation. That’s why we’re challenging you to rebel against the forces that limit you and jump headfirst into whatever makes you come alive.
Meet Jedidiah Jenkins
When we think of “jump first, fear later” no one comes to mind so much as our good friend and Invisible Children protégé, Jedidiah Jenkins. Last year Jed packed his bags and set out on a bike trip from Oregon to Patagonia. He recently completed his incredible journey, and was kind enough to share some of his reflections from along the way. We hope you’ll find them as inspiring as we did.
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I have spent twelve years building a beautiful community of friends and loved ones in Southern California. The thought of leaving that behind for a transient life, where every person I met would be gone from me in a matter of hours or days, began to whisper panic in my ears.
But this is why I am doing it. I want to know how human beings live in every corner. I want to see if they are different than me. I want to know how my actions affect the world. I want to know if I have a moral duty to care for a human being eight thousand miles away.
The spires of these mountains have called me south since I was a kid. You know when you’re little and you see a photo and say, in a high-pitched, cracking voice, ‘One day I’m gonna stand right there.’ Here I come.
On one of Chile’s most remote and largest lakes, Lago General Carretera, there hides a series of caves in the turquoise water. Carved marble, from thousands of years of wind-driven waves. Our little boat snaked through these caves, we drug our fingers across the painted marble, shifting with light like an alien prom dress. It made me want to hide from pirates and stash rubies next to a skeleton. It’s not even noon and I feel that I’ve been to the moon.
These places do indeed feel different, but the humanity that stands clearly at the center of everyone is kind and homey. The old ladies adorably laugh at our terrible Spanish and offer us too much food, and the old men are speaking slow and mumbled Spanish, but I guarantee they’re talking about the same things American old men are talking about: better days in the past, golden years, and how everything is too fast and forgotten today. Our differences are shallow and circumstantial, our key building blocks are the same.
We all have so much more in common with each other than we could ever believe by watching the news or staying safe in our cul-de-sac. That is why I love travel. You can’t hide from the truth very easily when you travel.
That has always been the spirit of my trip. To see the world slowly, primarily by bicycle, and to meet its people. Having been on the road almost a year now, this has become my life. I am accustomed to moving to a new town or landscape every week and that newness has become my expectation. The effect of this lifestyle is that human behavior begins to boil down to patterns of being. I see how everyone is similar, and how cultures are different. This is an incredible thing to discover for yourself because it transforms your own understanding of where you’re from into a malleable society that doesn’t have to be the way it is. That idea alone has changed the way I see the world. Anything can change. Anything can improve. And we have a lot to learn from each other.
Working with Invisible Children taught me to fight the tendency to distrust the other. It has taught me so much about seeing life from another side, and realizing how similar it is to mine. They have taught me that life in a mud hut in northern Uganda is not poverty, it is culture, and it is beautiful. This organization is about celebrating and defending the common humanity of us all. Through storytelling, we can spread the power of our connection as opposed to the lazy belief of our differences. The world needs more storytellers, spreading this message between every culture that has allowed its borders to become the boundaries of their care and camaraderie.
I continually stand by my belief that humanity is beautiful and our job as global citizens is to both celebrate our humanity and protect it.
Follow Jed’s journey on his blog and check out @jedidiahjenkins on Instagram.
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