New wave generation.

I grew up in a super rural area. There wasn’t much around. Old abandoned tobacco barns, desolate pastures, and gravel roads. We spent our Sundays going to church and eating fried chicken, biscuits, and vegetables from the garden. Life was simple then.

I remember standing barefoot, soles of my feet against the red clay dirt of the earth, staring up at a big blue sky with scattered clouds. I would try to imagine the most distant place I could think of and I would tell myself, there’s gotta be more than this.

Maybe it was then that I knew I wanted to travel the world. To visit as many countries, towns & villages as I could make my way to. My hope was to see how people around the world lived to understand what makes them happy, heathy, wealthy & wise.

As the years have passed, I’ve come to know that the happiest of people don’t have the best of things, but they make the best of what they have. Most of us already have everything that we need, but we spend our lives looking for more, just trying to fill some void from our childhood or one that we inherited from our parents’ parents. Instead, if we just took a beat and had a look around us and extended a little more love, support & kindness to those who are truly in need, we’d probably find that we all feel just a little bit better.

In these wild times that we live in, I can’t help but feel inspired by this amazing collective of Buddhist monks who are walking from Texas to Washington D.C. in honor of peace. Their purpose is simple yet elegantly profound as they walk to build “awareness of peace, loving kindness, and compassion across America and the world.”​ And just to warm our hearts a little bit more, this collective of monks is joined on the journey by their rescue dog, Aloka.

Follow their journey along here. Learn more about their trek here.