I’m 39,000 feet above sea level, cruising at an altitude of 611 mph. The temperature is -48 C and it’s pitch black outside as I gaze out the chilled oval window. You get accustomed to the deafening roar of the plane’s powerful engines, as you sink back into your seat and sip on your small plastic cup of water.

I’m flying to LA from Taipei, yet again in a continuous state of motion ever since I left my corporate day job in November 2010. One can say I overcompensated for not having traveled for over a year while working a 9-to-5, and therefore, binged on traveling once freed from 2-weeks-a-year-freedom.

I know, a year isn’t that long to not take a vacation or travel, but to me, a person who loves to see the world, experience the world, feel the world, it’s eternity. It’s all relative, as they say.

People ask me how does it feel. To always be in a state of flux.

This is how I feel. Maybe you can relate to some of these.

1. Liberating.

When you constantly move around, you are no longer bound to one location, one lifestyle, one point of view, one school of thought.

You are liberated to see more than one place, to live more than one lifestyle of your choice, to adopt more than one point of view, and to have different schools of thought.

I landed in Taipei on February 3, 2011 and left 10 days later for a 3-month adventure in Southeast Asia. I didn’t know I was going to be gone for 3 months. I thought I was just going to go for a couple of weeks, touch upon a few cool places and head back to Taipei.

Little did I know the power of the world grabbed ahold of me and wouldn’t let go until it wrung out the old Nina within so that what remained was some oddity that resembled something like my former self, but not quite.

I arrived in different places of the world as a different person. I held certain viewpoints, certain prejudices, certain precautions. And when I finally left to go to another place, I was stripped naked, exposed for the flawed human creature that I am.

I know I’m not perfect. I never was aiming to be. What I want is self-realization. The state of flux helps me to get closer to that.

2. Scary.

Do you think sometimes I’m scared to death of the things I do or don’t do? Of completing failing and being homeless with nothing to eat but ketchup packets from McDonald’s?

You bet your ass.

I’m clinging onto my fervent hopes and wishes for this life, this beautiful freeing life I’m able to live right now because I decided to extricate myself from the chains of an ugly beast that was a mediocre, suburban, office job lifestyle.

The state of flux is a scary place to be. It’s not for the weak. It’s not for the meek and feeble-minded. One has to embrace a high level of unknown, of ambiguous continuity, of not knowing and not planning but being okay with that.

I don’t plan anymore. Yes, I ‘plan’ to eat my next meal or have my next coffee (hopefully). But beyond my day-to-day, I don’t plan what I’m going to do Friday night. Or the end of the month. Let alone next year or 3 years from now.

Many people wouldn’t feel comfortable with this ‘not planning’ deal. They’d think it may be a waste of time to not be as productive as possible, as efficient as possible.

But are we looking for productivity and efficiency as the ultimate benchmark of a successful and happy life?

What is it that you look for? What is your purpose and why?

You must ask yourself this. I did and my answers revealed I don’t need to plan anymore because life is beautiful, scary, thrilling, and absolutely amazing the way it is, right now, at this very moment.

3. Exhilarating.

It’s exhilarating when you don’t plan. When you embrace flux to the utmost and let the world take its course on you, with you.

Every day becomes a new day. No day is ever the same anymore. You don’t know what’s going to happen by night’s end and you don’t necessarily want to. You just let it go and let it flow.

Back in Taipei, I found this outdoor exercise track that many folks from the neighborhood would use to walk around or get a workout in.

I put on my Vibram FiveFingers, funky webbed feet things that they are, slung my hair back into a loose ponytail, had a simple black tank and capris on, and hit the pavement.

I ran. And ran. And ran. Before I knew it, I lost count after over a couple of dozen loops. Sweat flew off my body like leaves falling off an autumn tree. Any stress, worries, transgressions, or doubts I had were blanked from my mind completely.

When you do something with no intentions beyond just the sheer act of doing that act, you can embrace a state of flux at its most basic level.

I didn’t have a goal to run 1 hour or to make X number of rounds. I ran until my body tired and my feet ached.

Some things, you just do. You don’t need a reason. You just do.

I want to detail a few things about the state of flux and how it can help you, should you choose to embrace this way of living.

How The State of Flux Can Help You

1. Severing the iron-clad hold that plans can often have on us.

Plans, in and of itself, are not a bad thing. It’s good to have plans every now and then. Maybe if and when you want to get married or if you want to have children or if you want to go back to school or if you want to adopt that pet at the local shelter or if you want to launch that start up.

It’s when we are bound by these self-made plans that they begin to harm us, rather than help us.

Plans taken to an extreme are not healthy. I don’t believe in a strict adherence to them and I know some of you will not agree with that. That’s okay. Maybe that’s why you haven’t been able to experience flux in your life, every now and then.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Chains are a bitch to walk around in.

Chains in plans, chains in clutter and material goods, chains in emotional weight, chains in living a life that is not your own.

When you simply have enough of it all, cut those chains off and walk away a free person. A person that is your own, one who is living in her own skin.

The state of flux doesn’t come with chains. But in order to get there, you need to first remove the ones you are wearing right now.

2. Acknowledging that today is all we have.

Some people will think this may sound depressing or morbid, but I am very, very cognizant that at any moment, I can die. We all will die. I look at all the sleeping passengers in this overnight international flight and I think, Good Lord, we’re all going to die.

That crying child right there. That couple holding hands while sleeping. That middle-aged businessman dozing while reading the newspaper. Those beautiful, young flight attendants walking up and down the aisles collecting rubbish.

Step outside and be struck down by a blazing SUV that ran through a red light. Stay at home and electrocute yourself on accident with your blow dryer. Go abroad and become so ill from a food you weren’t accustomed to that you fall into a coma and pass away in your sleep. Go to your neighborhood park to play baseball and get hit in the head with a 65-mph ball that you die instantly.

Do you see what I mean?

It doesn’t matter WHERE you are, WHAT you do, HOW safe you think you are or that you take all these precautions and whatnot.

At any moment not of our reckoning, our lives can — and will — end.

The state of flux will liberate you from thinking we have all the time in the world. It will instill a sense of deep urgency to do all that you want to do, be all that you want to be, and let those dreams be real now, rather than taking them to the grave with you.

I’m constantly moving, constantly writing, constantly doing what I love, with whomever I want to, should I choose to have companionship during my times of solitude.

I smile when I think of Claude Monet and what he said about his painting and life work, “I have been painting nonstop so I can capture as much as possible before my world goes completely dark.”

I know I’m not superwoman and I don’t have an endless supply of energy that allows me to continue on like some friggin’ mad person. (Though I love love love coffee. Intelligentsia anyone?)

What I do know is that my life work here is not yet done. And until the day I’m taken away, I will continue doing what my heart desires, for this frees me and allows me to have a real sense of meaning and purpose in my life.

3. Live in this moment.

We don’t have the past, we don’t have the future. All we have now is this moment.

You can then say, wait a minute, Nina, we do have the past. Hello regrets? Hello nightmares from my past self coming back to haunt me? Hello my boxes of old photos, files on my computer, junk in my storage closet?

Why don’t you stop saying hello and say good-bye instead? It’s easier than you think. Start with one good-bye and you get the motion of saying bye going.

Burn your life down, walk away from your past and live in the moment.

Do I sound like some sort of pleasure-seeking, consequence-free-willing modern day hippie?

Perhaps to some folks.

But my philosophy as it pertains to our lives is that you simply don’t have time to do everything you want to do, let alone make excuses for not doing things which you should be doing (like your heart’s work). You need to make those decisions to let go of all the rest that doesn’t add anything to your life and embrace the moment by diving right into what does matter.

When people take a look of photos of me even from 3 months ago, I already am physically changing so much, evolving so fast, that I look, speak, and act like a completely different person. I cannot explain this strange phenomenon, but I swear to you, I think I’m getting younger by the month.

How did this come about? What is causing my seemingly perpetual decline in physical aging? I can think of a few things that might have contributed to this.

The state of flux
Ambiguous continuity
Constant growth and learning
Movement in the world
Selective participation
Self-evolutionary inertia

Some of these above topics have already been explored in past posts. As for now, these are just some things which I think is contributing to such dynamic changes. If it can work for me, it can work for you.

**

The state of flux is available to everyone who wants to experience it. That’s the beauty of such things. They aren’t ‘things’ at all!

They are all states of mind, states of being, and all that is within us already. We just haven’t explored all the vast crevices of our entire being just yet. But you can start today. And I encourage you to try it out.

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