The invitation
Morning. You wake up. Your surroundings are familiar, known. You raise yourself from the high mattress and drag yourself on all fours to the stairs. You make the same route from the gallery upstairs to the bathroom downstairs, wash your face and look at a face furrowed and glistening with a white down. Yes. Very soon you will die.
In the kitchen, you stand in exactly the same corner, at the same angle, making yourself exactly the same breakfast you have been preparing for decades; cooked quinoa in a bowl of sliced banana, dates and nuts, all mixed with smooth chia seeds that have been soaked in water for exactly twenty minutes. And you, in a kitchen that is not yours, look at that same corner and say: Another day.
The Invitation:
"Dear Me,
You are cordially invited to attend your Once in a Lifetime Trip, to be held as soon as possible. We know you never got to go on your tour of the world after your army service and that was because you were told that you had to work from dusk 'til dawn to earn respect and a bit of money. But now, dear Me, time is running out, you have one foot in the grave and before you die you must define, once and for all, who you are. Come. Get rid of your belongings, put them away, sell what you can, detach yourself from your beliefs and go on the Journey of Your Life."
You take your feet off the table and straighten up. Could this be a message from the wanderlust? Could this be the last call to the gate to the rest of the world? In any case, you, the keeper of habits, the dreamer of dreams, the cautious one who is burning with desire, must promise yourself that before you disappear completely you must take a stick in your hand, strap a backpack to your back and move on.

Photo courtesy of Eyal Rotman
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