Wide Awake.

"Wide Awake" is a great description of what its like after you realize you have been pulled into the whirlwind of life: You finally realize that you’ve been caught up in what everyone seems to be striving for (to be perfect, to have it all), and you fall from that fleeting high that you get from the temporary pleasures of life (self-seeking satisfaction, power, perfection, selfish desires, and friendships built on a tower of glass drinks).  One day, you wake up and realize that the happiness you have been seeking in all the wrong places has carried you up and away from reality- the reality of true joy and peace.  I used to think that reality was devastation, and that it was a life of monotony, rules, and blindness. I preferred to live in the clouds. That is, until I saw that the reality most of us see isn’t what’s behind it all.  What’s behind it all is what drives use to be who we are, drives us to love unconditionally and passionately for a purpose, an eternal happiness, fulfillment, satisfaction and peace.  Once I saw this truth, I realized that hardly anyone does.  Honestly, I know only a few people in my life who have grasped this incredible reality, a world not even visible to most because they are so focused on the wrong things.

I have been on a year and half long journey since I started Passports & Prada, to seek happiness in the little things in life, to find true peace, joy, and love for life again.  The problem is that I pursued it in all the wrong places.  I was looking at: what should I look like, where should I live, what should I listen to, wear, say, eat & drink?  You see, there’s nothing wrong with seeking those things, but I found that the happiness I received was temporary.  In one way or another, you live your life based on what you think will make you happy.  You seek happiness in: marriage, health and fitness, “the little things in life,” fashion, guys, friends, tv-shows, partying, career, travel, etc... I hate to be the one to break it to you, but it will eventually all come crashing down. This is because you are only being held up by droplets that are small and light at first, but what goes up must come down. The heavy cloud full of tiny little droplets has reached its limit and it’ll start to pour.  I'm not saying at all that these things are wrong, but they don’t create forever-fulfilling peace and happiness... and love so deep within you that it emanates from the way you live your life. That’s the kind of joy I’m seeking, not the temporary pleasures that lead to a short high and then another devastating low.

I want lasting.  I want fulfilling.  I want eternal.   

The best part is that when you do find this kind of joy, it will lift you up and bring all those things you were seeking happiness in to be lifted up with you, and they will stay up… forever! Problem solved.

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