The other night I worked at cafe Ezuz and a Bob Marley tribute band, Sergio Braams, was playing live.  The night was so cold and the cafe so far away from any real city that I was surprised by the amount of people that came out to hear the band.  The music was good, the vibe was good, even the 'aroma' in the air was good.  Some people were jumping up and down, others shaking their dreads, and some just swaying back and forth to the rhythm of the music.  It's nights like these that I often wonder how I got here and what am I doing here?  My life has taken so many twist and turns in the last 10 or so years that I am often left with feelings of amazement, wonder, and curiosity.  

What is the meaning of life?  It is the question that I and many others ask again and again.  Laying next to Shalom the other night he just smiled and said what many people say, what I've said in the past but without fully understanding it.  Life is about being happy.  And then it hit me, this doesn't mean that finding that job, or buying that car, or hooking up with that man or women, or taking a motorcycle trip around the world will bring happiness.  It means to just be happy.  Now a days it is so hard to just be anything because the world is telling you to be so many different things, but if one can just be than maybe they can just be happy.  And although I am itching to get on the road again, the dessert has been a great place to just be (happy)!

LUCK

Do you believe in luck?  Maybe you call it something different; God, the universe, Karma.  I don't know what I believe but I often joke that in a past life I must have been someone very good to deserve the life that I have now.  Some people might think me ignorant for not knowing what I believe in, but for me there are so many unknowns in this world that it seems impossible to believe in any one thing.

On that note though, I believe I was lucky the other day.  Again, some people might say unlucky, but the way things worked out in the end, I like to look at the glass as half full.  Shalom and I were in Tel Aviv last week, and went for a walk after enjoying a little too much Thai food.  We parked ourselves on the benches overlooking the darkness of the Mediterranean Sea and as the mood allowed became distracted with one another.  Shalom then looked up and saw a young man, nothing strange about him except for the fact he looked back.  Upon further inspection Shalom noticed this young man had took my handbag.  Shalom shouted at the kid which startled him and stopped him in his tracts.  Despite the urge to beat the living day lights out of the thief, Shalom merrily shoved him and took my bag back.  Now I was watching this whole thing go down, ashamed how I could get my bag nicked so easily, but also in aw of how stupid the thief was.  There was no way we would have caught him if he started running, and we would have never even noticed him if he didn't look back at Shalom.  And with everything that I had inside my bag (passport, motorcycle papers, my only working visa card, cash, phone, keys...) I would have been hard pressed to get myself out of that mess.  So, I feel very lucky and happy not to have lost my bag.  I also learned a valuable lesson on not being so trusting with my belongings ;)