Dear all,

In one of the first nights spent here in Iceland, wanting to find something to watch mindlessly before bed on Netflix, I came across this brilliant stand-up comedian - Daniel Sloss. Totally recommended! His show is witty, pretty dark (the way I like it), makes me laugh so hard at 2 in the morning, scared to wake up my housemate. But what I didn't expect is it raises important questions about my life, about my relationships and decisions with his Jigsaw puzzle analogy. (Which is a perfect thing to do when you can't freaking sleep at 2 in the freaking morning right?!).

What is the meaning of life? The way he sees it, it is like a jigsaw puzzle in which we try to pierce our own jigsaws with every lesson we learn and every experience we live. The tricky part is we lost the box so we pretty much don't know how it's gonna look like once finished. So, step by step, we first begin with the four corners of the puzzle, which are family, friends, hobbies/interests and job.

But what about the center piece? Most of the time, we believe it's the partner piece. We believe that our life is only completed once we find our perfect partner with whom we grow old. This belief might work with some, but definitely not with the majority of the rest. And it is totally understandable how we are tricked to have such belief for growing up in this society which promotes the perfect romance ideology. It leads us to make stupid decisions on our puzzle just for the sake of having someone in the middle of it, working towards a different image in mind and then ending up not recognizing our puzzle anymore.

And that is just sad.

For him, and with whom I wholeheartedly agree, the center piece of our puzzle should be filled with things that bring us happiness. We have to learn to love ourselves first before letting someone else love us. And if I may quote the attached article, I believe working towards completing our personal jigsaw is our journey of self-fulfillment. The jigsaws that we should piece are the combination of our passion, our skills, strengths, experiences, lessons and the support we receive from our loved ones along our journey. Piece by piece and step by step.

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With 3 months here, and many more, I think about this ideology a lot. What really makes me happy? I can compose a list of small and concrete and tangible things that always bring my joy. Like coffee, high GPA, chicken, good movies, good music, guitar sounds, the feeling when you successfully debug, nights of drinking with friends and karaoke-ing, screaming until your throat hurts like hell the next day, etc.

But especially here, in Iceland, I also enjoy trekking, planning my next trip, feeling the wind and rain freaking slathering on my face, camping, discovering new places, cooking, swimming in pools and hot springs with the weather of 5 degrees, sitting next to the driver's seat because I cannot freaking drive, making new friendships and learning about them along the journey and many many more.

And then I start to think, maybe, just maybe, I really like traveling. This may sound irony since I originally created this blog for the sake of traveling 7 freaking years ago. And maybe I came to this sudden realization because last night I was showing my friend all the film photos I took during my previous trip that I might have forgotten about. All the feels just come back you know. And also maybe because I also planned for another trekking in the north of Vietnam with friends once I come back home.

These are the things that bring me joy, and piece in mind as well. And I just wish I could continue doing this for long. There are many other reasons that just push me to travel to go and that I can't wait to tell you all about. And I really hope that these honest thoughts of mine do resonate with you at some level and I hope all of us are working with the right pieces for our puzzles.

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Anyway, here's a bunch of 35mm photos that motivate me to write this post since yesterday when I was showing them to my friend.