International Travel Meets Inner Trial

There’s a motif in storytelling known as the threshold guardian. He appears when you’re leaving the boundaries of the known world and entering something far more expansive … something you know little, if anything, about.

The threshold guardian can show up in many forms: It could be a person saying, “Stay a little while longer in this part of town. We need you on the farm,” and blah blah blah. “No, don’t go to the army yet. Wait a little while longer.”

It can also appear as bureaucratic systems with endless loops of “hurry up and wait.” Do this, sign that, then maybe—maybe—you’ll be ready to take off.

For me, trying to blaze a trail into international travel, it showed up as everything going wrong: I didn’t know how to find an affordable hotel, my mobile phone got lost literally on the way out of the U.S., and with barely any connection to the outside world, I suddenly couldn’t access my bank.

I keep going.

I found myself considering panhandling—or selling all my expensive music equipment—just to buy time and figure out a next move. I walked into a pawn shop. It had bars over small windows you had to bend to look through. The people inside did not look happy. It wasn’t the place. I had to find something else, especially in a foreign land with no grasp of the language.

With the situation turning sour, I got the distinct feeling I needed to turn back. Head home. Regroup. Wait a little longer.

But I couldn’t do it. I had ways I could go back—options I’d worked out. Instead, I told that part of myself no … and I kept moving forward. Unless I was dragged away kicking and screaming, I wasn’t leaving this path.

I keep going.

I made the choice with certainty: the only way out is forward. And with that came consequences. Eventually, light broke through. The path opened. I stepped out of that tunnel a little wiser, a little more cautious—But with everything I needed to take the next step, including the conviction.

I didn’t turn back. I didn’t break. I decided that the path was mine—and I walked it until it let me through.