I have come to realize that I have unhealthily spent the majority of this trip longing for something lost. Several times a day, while surrounded by a group of people, I become consumed by my own thoughts, drifting off into a world of seclusion while people talk and laugh around me. I am lost in thoughts of Nigel. He is supposed to be here. Why can’t he be here? What would this be like if he were here? I know the answer, of course. It would be amazing. And somehow, in my desire to share this with him, in my longing for his presence, his laughter, his wisdom, I have lost sight of the fact that this trip IS amazing, because even though I can’t see or touch Nigel, he is here. He is everywhere. Because the truth is, Nigel’s soul was far too beautiful to be contained by this world. And that is why he was released from it. So he could be free to be everywhere at once, so his dreams of seeing every inch of this globe could be realized. Now he is everywhere, and that means he is also here. There are moments when I feel him. And regardless, he is always living every moment with me, because we travel this road together in my heart even if not in what we have come to call ‘reality.’ When Nigel died, one of the first things I said was that the world had lost a treasure. I thought about this a lot last night, and I realized how apt it truly is to say it. Treasure is something people look for, search for. It is something desired for its beauty, for its value, for its worth. When people met Nigel, they were being confronted with something they had searched for their whole lives. Because in Nigel could be found the culmination of every beautiful, precious and valued thing in this world. Hope, love, freedom, compassion, laughter, contentment, resilience, honesty, adventure. In Nigel, one could find what one spent their lives seeking. And that is why everyone loved him. That is why Nigel changed lives. That is why his death could be just as transformative as his life had been for those who loved him. Because when treasure is found and then lost, we must once again begin the search, knowing what it was to have been confronted with something truly amazing, and now to realize its absence in a way far deeper than would have been possible before this confrontation. We begin to search for a replacement. We look everywhere for this beauty, longing to fill the void of what has been lost. I do believe that by discovering the world, one can discover oneself. But in the end, I have come to find that this is not enough. Because looking into the world to fill the void in oneself is not possible. It is also not possible to fill the void in oneself with another person. … “I am convinced that no one loses anyone, because no one owns anyone. That is the true experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world without owning it” (Paulo Coelho). One must also discover oneself in order to discover the world. Looking to know who you are by the things and people and places around you is not the only task that must be taken to hand, we must also look to ourselves to know the things and people and places around us. And we must be willing to lose, because nothing is really ours. Longing for what has been lost is torment. It creates a void that one seeks to fill with what is absent. And this is not possible. But to realize that nothing is ever really lost because nothing really belonged to you from the start, this is freedom. This is joy. This is love. We must come to realize that in order to have something real and meaningful and lasting in this world, we must accept that, in reality, we have nothing.
