In pursuit of "why not?"

considering how this question has shaped my life

Looking back, it’s such an obvious solution to my problem. At the time, I was afraid to commit. Too uncertain I could pull it off. Too many unknowns, too many “shoulds”. I’d only been on the island six months. What did I know?

My husband was gone nearly all of those months, from October 2013 to March 2014. On his way home from a deployment in the Balkans, his team had an extended layover in Germany. Something about getting clearance to travel to Portugal. Regardless of the excuse, I wasn’t going to wait another week to wrap my arms around him. That’s life, better get used to it. I heard that a lot — wisdom to resign to the reality that, as a military spouse, my life was out of my control, so deal with it. I usually did what I was told. I was normally adaptable and unfussy.

This was not one of those times.

I was complaining to friends about the deployment team leader’s decision to “waste time” getting home. I couldn’t justify the military keeping him away from me one more hour than necessary this time. Months apart while I was living in a new country already wasn’t fair, but it felt like torture that he was going to be just a couple hours away indulging schnitzel and dunkel for a whole, bloated week.

One friend didn’t let me off the hook or indulge my dramatic impatience. She said, “you should just fly to Germany. Why not?”

Why not?

It occurred to me this hadn’t occurred to me. I hadn’t considered myself capable of doing that. I should be content simply waiting on my husband to come home. Besides, I probably had no business trying to figure out the “how” of international solo travel while my husband needed stability to return to.

Could I really just go there? 

You’d think living abroad I’d have worked up some nerve to travel, or at least the desire. That just wasn’t true. I’d not used my tourist passport yet (my military passport only had the one stamp from moving to Portugal, arriving by military flight directly on base.) I was profoundly untraveled. Obeying military orders isn’t auto-given travel credibility or experience.

I had a moment of clarity (and some help and encouragement from my well-traveled friends) and realized: the how is simple. You pack and then you get on the plane. You have to do it the way anyone does anything outside their comfort zone: pursue it.

Eight years ago I followed that impulse to Germany. In the last eight years, my life has been shaped dramatically because of that particular “why not”. As I reflect, I captured some significant impacts of following that catalytic question — and asking it again and again — that have taken place.

It’s not a comprehensive list — just a sampling of realizations. Some are travel-related, and others aren’t. All involve wandering, and maybe that’s the point.

Why not?

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Prioritize meaningful experiences.
Lane couldn’t get leave after he returned from the deployment to the Balkans in 2014. We bought passes to weeklong music festival called Somersault in the Devon countryside, a county in the western, rural part of England. I was sad he couldn’t join me, but I still wanted to go. My favorite musician at the time, Ben Howard, was headlining in his hometown festival, with support from others I loved: Jack Johnson, Half Moon Run, and Hiss Golden Messenger.

I packed light. That solo backpacking trip across England saw me pack not only a tent and its poles and rain fly, but also my giant brick of a laptop, so I could work my freelance design job from London after I trekked back to the city to see friends after the festival. All in one carryon size backpack, including clothes, toiletries, the festival t-shirt and burdensome coffee mug I collected along the way, and enough books you’d think I was concerned there aren’t bookstores in a little town like London. Books and trinkets included: the lighter I pack, the more nimble I become. The nimble can act most swiftly on “why not?”

The trip included a thousand “why not” encounters: camping for a week at the festival. Introducing myself to strangers again and again, and making friends at a long table dinner. Getting the stink eye from ladies in the service tent for ordering for breakfast some coffee and a scone with devonshire clotted cream with jam on top because, hello, local cuisine! A sea rafting excursion to luscious Exmoor on the North Devon Coast. Hitchhiking from London to Barnstaple and back. I was occasionally alone, but I was never lonely.

Bombino, a desert bluesy Hendrix-inspired guy from Niger, West Africa, took the main stage with his electric guitar one afternoon. During his set, it started to pour down rain. This nomadic Tuareg from the desert sang into the elements and proclaimed ”WATER IS LIFE”. The sentiment hit me deeply, a personal exchange about the substance of our shared existence. I had a similar feeling experiencing Ben Howard’s live music in the fields and woods that served to inspire much of his early songwriting. It was a deliberate collision of art and place.

I learned to find out why people love their places and cultures. They’ll tell you. If you’re really lucky, they’ll show you.

Follow curiosity.
This is how I knew to say yes when Katie asked if I would go with her to Palestine in the summer of 2015. I didn’t agree because I had a deep, holistic view of the history or politics there. I really only knew what she told me when she visited on her way home, shell-shocked after the 2014 Gaza War. But I was curious enough to take the trip. Why not?

I sensed the trip would become more than a pilgrim’s obligation to see the sacred places of a particular faith, which is what takes many to the Holy Land. For two weeks, we worked shoulder to shoulder with a Palestinian family peacefully resisting the violent occupation of their land, with the threat of property confiscation and imminent destruction. We picked apples and plucked wheat and watered trees. We shared stories of hope and violence and reconciliation. We visited a couple holy sites. Over our farm chores, we spoke a lot about place, because it’s the crux of history and people in this context.

Pack and get on the plane. Arrive ignorant, reactive, and in it primarily for the passport stamps. Wonder at why you’re here, in this place in particular. Open up and see it for yourself. Curiosity may just influence someone else’s life, and it’s guaranteed to change yours. When you go to see sacred places and you discover holy stories and real suffering instead, you don’t get to leave unchanged.

Live alternatively.
We leased a cute home in Albuquerque when we moved back to the U.S. from Portugal in 2015, but it would be a few months before our household goods and car would arrive from the Azores. We bought a used pull-out couch that would be our sole piece of furniture until the shipment arrived. It lived in the dining room. We slept, ate, and lived on that pull-out couch. I worked on my laptop at the kitchen counter, where I stacked up books to make a standing desk. We used socks for potholders (yes, I packed books over potholders.) We bought an acoustic guitar and a coffee pot, so we had the essential provisions. My cousin lent us her car, and new friends lent us boxes of kitchenwares. They wondered how we got by for so long without all our stuff. We wondered what we were going to do when all the crap showed up we had packed on the island and clearly could live without.

After realizing we could live a while in 40 square feet with few possessions, we went all in for a while. We left New Mexico and the Air Force behind in 2016 and rented a stall in my uncle’s old diesel shop on a hilly, winding blacktop out in rural Mid-Missouri near family. The place reeked of hay and propane, but it had electricity and a little bit of plumbing. We embraced simplicity again and decided to live where our stuff was stored. We made the place livable (mostly by clearing out critters and their homes) and moved into the barn. It was more home than anywhere else could have been for the four months we lived there.

You know how one thing leads to another. Because we were location independent for a time, we lived for a bit on a friend’s farm in East Tennessee WWOOFing and working as farm hands on a permaculture farm. She happens to be the same friend who told me to go to Germany and now I think I’m the one with the wild ideas. It was on her farm that my husband and I had the space to reflect on our military experience and decide what came next, which would be moving to Colorado, followed by a two-month long roadtrip to rock climb, camp, and live out of my compact Kia Forte, and finally moving into a 600 square foot house near the film school Lane would attend in Aurora.

The simpler, more minimal we lived, the farther we could go. The longer we could stay. The more fulfilled we were. This doesn’t make any sense if essentialism isn’t the key: I kept ending up on farms or camping, and my favorite place we lived was a barn. I mean, why not?

Value being over doing.
In the near-decade since graduating college and starting work, I hadn’t taken a week off that didn't get filled by even harder work away from home. Even when I'd traveled, I'd find cafes to set up late at night to knock out projects, never unplugging, always making it work no matter how dead tired I was. It's way too easy for me to work while I move around. Because I can work anywhere, I tend to. It was reasonable that I should’ve been tired, right?

Here's what else I know: I'm not what I create. I'm not the things I lead. I'm not a decade of design expertise or the writing I put out into the world. I'm not limitless in energy. I am far more concerned with who I am becoming than what I can produce. So, I asked “why not?” and I made a big decision in 2020. I was going to take a sabbatical. I didn’t know how to take a month off work or what I’d do with the time, but I figured it would be a bit like pack and get on the plane and do the thing.

I booked a 2-week horsepacking trip in the Wyoming mountains with NOLS where I could soak in nature and not look at a screen for longer than I had in my entire life. Then two more weeks (mostly offline) traveling to Oregon with my best friend Maddison for a personal getaway, and doing whatever else my body, heart, and mind needed to renew so I could come back better than before. I'd be rested and reset. I was nervous and hopeful.

Though I traveled very far, I remembered what it’s like to be still and know. To wake up to my soul and creativity. To collect stories and ideas. To live undistracted. To have space to feel and be. To take an annual sabbatical, if it’s possible. It’s the depth, not the distance, that matters to me.

Serve others.
At first the “why not” question was just a personal journey to challenge my location, lifestyle, or worldview. Along the way, I began using my “why not” experiences with travel and beyond to help others dream of a better world.

Why not: become a graphic designer by profession and a humanitarian by vocation. With an emphasis on social impact, I collaborate to craft distinct visual identities with non-profits as they transform lives. I joined forces with talented change agents and trailblazers who encourage flourishing in communities through meaningful design, connection, and story. I let all of my life’s “why nots” build a perspective that deeply influences the way I approach art and complex design solutions while expertly balancing beauty and efficacy.

Why not: make a deliberate decision to start a small group. I asked someone I barely knew yet (Maddison, who would end up becoming like a sister) if she’d co-lead with me. We focused it on Middle East understanding and peacemaking, a region of the world we’d both left pieces of our hearts in. We got to watch it grow organically into intentional, interpersonal peacemaking within the group. We’ve lead in step for years together, and built a thriving missional community that survived a pandemic that so much didn’t.

Why not: travel back to the Middle East to volunteer as a photographer, capturing images for local organizations serving Palestinian refugees in camps across Lebanon and Jordan? Approached with curiosity and consciousness, photography has been a bridge to communities often ignored. I showed up with a camera with the intent to witness, and let people and places tell their own stories the way they want them told. I continue to help organizations tell their people- and place-centric stories by capturing lives and spaces with an eye for beauty and hope, always to affirm dignity.

I found a way to stay nimble, create good and inclusive spaces, and be an artist. I believe in the power of telling our sacred stories together.

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Thanks for traveling with me, however long you’ve been a reader of my words, or holding me accountable to “why nots” in my life. Doing this in community enables us to dream more courageously with support, especially given the state of the world and our various limitations.

It’s easier to churn through "what ifs" and “shoulds” than to try something I’ve never tried, go someplace I’ve never been, to do something beyond my threshold of comfort. I've found the deepest impact, purpose, and life are found right here: in having the guts to start, move, travel, make, or say something brave and imperfect just to see what it can do.

I need intentional space to discover my “why nots” — guided by my own intuition, heart, and spirit — so I can pursue possibility, make meaningful experiences, and live a richly creative life. I'll keep an eye on the magic of “why nots” and stay curious about the risky pursuits instead of excuses. It takes initiative to trust ourselves enough to feel the way forward. I’m not too arrogant to believe they’ll all work out. I just mean I want to practice it with resilience anyway. As Rilke said:

“The point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” -Rainer Maria Rilke

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I believe everyone can make “why not” a practice. Yours will look different from mine, as it should. May this get gears turning. I’d love to know — what is one “why not” that has changed (or could change) your life? I’ll go first in the comments.

Why not?