“People love to tell me their shit. That’s always been my superpower. A person in the back of an ambulance will tell me their deepest, darkest secrets. And I can usually find a connection with just about anyone. This is New York, so I’ve got patients from all over the world. When I ask them where they’re from, they might say: ‘Mongolia.’ So I’ll tell them about my trip to Mongolia. Or Nepal. Or Zimbabwe. I’ve made it to about 90 different countries so far. I’ve never been married. Never been great at relationships. So I decided early on that travel was going to be my thing. I’d work a million hours until I could afford a plane ticket, then I’d take a trip somewhere. Afterwards I’d come back and do it all over again. My world was so tiny when I started. I was just a kid from Brooklyn. I’d had a pretty traumatic childhood, my brother was murdered when I was sixteen. And I felt like the world had it in for me. Everything felt so personal. I knew other people were hurting, but it was an abstract thing, until I started travelling. I began to meet people on the other side of the world who were suffering just as much as me. But you know what? They had decided to joyfully partake in that suffering. They opened their homes to me. They cooked meals for me. They told me their stories. They shared all their shit. And I’m like: ‘Wow. You grew up in Bombay. I grew up in Brooklyn. But we have the exact same story.’ It really opened me up. Now when I’m comforting someone in the back of an ambulance, I have this great big world to pull from. In a job like this you see things that kinda make you want to pull back from the world. Child abuse. That’s the big one for me. Seeing the beatings, seeing the hurt kids. It’s just so dark. And you project that darkness on everyone. You want nothing to do with other people. You want to pull back, and close up. But travel has always been the thing that keeps me open. It keeps me curious. Because no matter how dark it gets, the moment I step on that plane, I’m surrounded by possibilities again. There’s always something I haven’t seen. Or a dish I haven’t eaten. Or a person I haven’t met, who will tell me something that I’ve never heard before.”
snowghoul
turnnoffyourmind
romaincrisis
discoholicmusic
ellievsbear
izzy806
gummygunk
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
