"A young man's remarkable, true journey through thirteen African countries with his brother and two best friends. Erik Mirandette was completing a two year-stint with a humanitarian organization in Morocco when, continuing his quest to live the life he was created to life, he set off on an unforgettable pilgrimage. Beginning in Cape Town, Erik, his brother, and his two best friends traveled 9,000 miles north by dirt bike, experiencing the poverty, beauty, and dangers of the African continent.
Then in Cairo, having safely reached the end of their perilous journey a terrorist's bomb ripped Erik's world and faith apart. The four travelers were now desperately wounded and on the brink of death."
I read the book in a day or two and loved it. The journey is nothing I can relate too, I mean, my travel experience has been plush compared to camping out in the African bush and riding a dirt bike for four months. The tragedy that impacted these young men on the end of the journey is scary, and I have thought about how I would react in such a situation. Faced with his own tremendous injuries and loss Erik writes:
"The most horrible and terrifying thing that I can imagine isn't that I would put all that I am on the line for a cause I believe in and be called on it. The most horrible and terrifying thing is the thought that I could spent my whole existence minimizing the risks I take, living ignorantly convinced of my safety, rejecting the purpose that I was created for, and then someday wake up an old man and see that my life has passed before me, and now with death knocking on my door realize that in all my years I have never truly lived."
While sitting in a comfortable chair reading that paragraph with only a page left in the book I was struck by how much I felt that same way. I fear making the wrong choices all the time, but most of all- I fear that I won't take enough chances, I won't take enough jumps, that I will hold on too tightly to my perceived notion of control and never allow the purpose of what I was created for take center stage.
As I round out this time of discovery, and as I have been more reflective on what it all meant, how leaving camp was a difficult and trying decision, and how waking up that first morning with no where to be, no one to work for... I am thankful that if I left this earth tomorrow that I will know that I took the only road north, it wasn't easy, and it was full of its own hills... it may not have been Africa, but it was my journey and I have truly lived during this time.
Read the book... its a good one.
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