Here be Dragons

A relaxing weekend away with the family is seldom relaxing. Amid the familiar banter and delectable meals and too many cups of tea to count, I was gently heckled about my plans after graduation. My brother is at cooking school, with a prodigious career mapped out for him. My future as a journalist, however, seems to be on the ‘here be dragons’ portion of the map.

Natalie Goldberg talks about finding your third thing. What is my third thing? My father is an ‘eco-ninja’: his passion for the environment fuels his work in conservation. My childhood was littered with anti-litter campaigns, camping trips in the middle of nowhere and David Attenborough documentaries. I can name flora and fauna with the ease of a zoologist.

My dream of working for National Geographic hatched early. Stacks of the yellowing yellow journals towered over my head as I sat cross-legged for hours, pouring over the pictures that seemed alive. I imagined the writers of these fantastic stories to be delightfully dishevelled, with bright eyes, dusty hiking boots and armfuls of yarn to spin.

Nature is my comfort zone. I love writing about rhino poaching and recycling; like my father, my passion powers my work. An internship with an environmental journalist seemed the natural choice then. You know what they say about connections. In Goldberg’s eyes, my third thing is the environment.

But it’s time to gaze out at a something different.

I pride myself on swimming against the current, but I fear that I am a hypocrite. I don’t believe courage resides in one’s comfort zone. There are no great stories about journalists who stayed in their lane.

Just like Robert Frost, I am faced with two roads, which diverge in a yellow wood. My comfort zone follows an easy, well-worn path. I would enjoy a lovely stroll in soft sunlight, soothed by a gentle breeze. I know myself well enough to realise that boredom would kick in long before I reached the end of that road.

The other road, the one less travelled by, is a little more mysterious. The path winds and twists, snakes up and down hills, through valleys and rivers. There is no map for this path, no indication of what greets me at the end of it, but something is calling me from within those trees.

With three quarters of a journalism degree, I’m steps away from embodying the scruffy adventurers of my childhood dreams. National Geographic is not on the path of least resistance.

I have the capacity to do more. I don’t want to write about an environmental issue and leave the story after the final full stop, deserting the subjects of the story to live that reality while I move on. I have realised my potential for empathy, a quality which I want to overflow into my journalism. I want to write stories that make an impact, not just on my readers but on the subjects, the people and places, themselves.

One of the most inspirational books that I have read left me with a strong sensation in my gut that this is the kind of path I must follow. Shantaram is steeped in vivid imagery and is a profound tribute to human strength. Despite his unforgiving reality, the main character continues to fight for what he believes in and work for the good of those he loves. This is a quality that I want to take into my journalism: ‘no matter how good or bad the luck, you can change your life completely with a single thought or a single act of love’.

I strongly believe that working with people, providing solutions, and digging my hands into the dirt of these stories is my third thing. This is the path which I need to follow, however much it may need wear. It will take courage to choose this path without knowing what the future holds. I don’t want to settle too soon; I want to travel after I’ve graduated. My grasp of the English language is going to be the platform from which I will leap. Teaching English will give me some stability while I freelance from whatever country I find myself. I feel that I must stretch my wings.

I have inherited a fortuitous mix of my father’s idealism and my mother’s fretfulness. I have big dreams, but I’m scared of the dark. I would love to travel to Pondicherry and Kathmandu, but I feel naïve and unsure of myself just as often. I have the niggling feeling that teaching English in a foreign country is what every white girl does with her gap year, but I know that my dreams outweigh the boozy scales of the typical.

Part of Rebecca Solnit’s article about Virginia Woolf struck a chord. Perhaps I do not need to have a plan that is set in stone, perhaps I should ‘[celebrate] the unpredictable meander, on mind and foot’ as Woolf did. I clutch at control in most areas of my life; for someone who is afraid of the dark, the future seems murky and elusive. It takes courage to release that need to control, to give rein to my true self’s wishes and let it guide me, unimpeded, into my future.

It takes courage to release the notion that I need to follow a mainstream route – these are my paths to choose, not anyone else’s. My plans may be vague, but I am in the orbit of my dreams.

There is no map for the road less travelled – I will have to make my own markings. ‘Here be dragons’ is sounding an awful lot like an adventure.

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This was the final assignment of one of my writing modules in university - the topic was "courage". It's quite a personal piece which I enjoyed writing; I hope you enjoyed reading it.