About letting go

After rediscovering posts from my old ivodr.com blog, I decided to bring my travel stories back to life—making them accessible again and preserving the memories of an incredible journey I returned from just over two years ago.

This is Post #7. More stories to come!

📍 Find all my travel posts here.

This was 3 weeks ago but I got to post it only now :)

This morning I woke up in the ancient city of Mardin in eastern Turkey and in the northern part of ancient Mesopotamia. Yes, the famous Mesopotamia we know from history and religion (I only realized this when I was literally looking at at from the roof of my hotel).

Meditation was difficult this morning, somehow I felt contracted and my mind was very unsteady. The last days had been OK, but somehow things didn’t feel quite right. Also, I wasn’t sure whether I should travel to Şanlıurfa or skip Şanlıurfa and go to Gazianthep.

So I decided to let go, lean back and let life take over the steering wheel. Not taking any decision, but to just seeing what happens, trusting in life.

Suddenly things started to flow and feel good: I sat in a mosque, flooded by the feeling that all is good as it is, that I don’t need to do or change anything. In a coffee shop, I was treated to Hakire and Mirra and sat in a Syrian orthodox church and felt permeated and held by love. I spoke about faith with a young man who had become Christian. He took me to two more churches and told me about this fears of not being accepted anymore by his family because he had converted. Then, at 3pm (very late, given that it gets dark at 5pm) I started to hitchhike and was picked up by the first driver (a police man and his son) within 1 minute. Hitchhiking further didn’t work out so well (i.e. it got dark and nobody picked me up for over two hours), but another young man at a petrol station gave me tea and organized a bus to Şanlıurfa for me. And his friend bought cookies for me.

Now I am in the bus to Şanlıurfa, the birthplace of Abraham. I have no idea where I am going to sleep but am sure life will continue take care. (And just in case, I have the address of a hotel I was recommended by a friend). The next post covers what happened next…

What I learned: out of fear of missing out, I had started to over-plan and my mind felt stressed and was trying to control everything. What helped was to let go, feel deeply what I need and want and what feels right and let myself be guided by life.

One of my favorite songs talks about this: