Travel, paint, reflect. Repeat.

The two main paths I tread these days are painting and helping people travel. New perspectives, and the wisdom we gain from looking at the world from a different angle, are the best thing about travel. Pretty much the same thing goes for painting. When done with full heart, both allow you to shed your blinders, coming to belong to something deeper and broader than our single worlds.

Sometimes that means travelling by yourself as a sixty-something woman. With your crazy little dog. And sometimes sitting right down on the ground next to a four-hundred-year-old fountain — no matter how many grown-ups frown at you — because what you’re looking at is just so wonderful.

Most of the same things I believe about travel, I believe about painting. Be prepared to revisit your assumptions. Don’t get too cozy with thinking you know what’s happening. Learn the abiding wisdom and surpassing joy of knowing you are out of your element and wide awake.

I have spent a good long part of my life helping people travel independently, mainly all over Europe — with a pedigree of several decades of affordable, award-winning, innovative travel entrepreneurship.

I spent another decade in a different career, writing and delivering workshops on cultural diversity in the corporate workplace: helping people work and communicate well with others who come from a different background than they do. I taught, I wrote, I taught the teachers. My workshops were syndicated nationwide; last time I counted, around 50,000 people had taken them.

In the last decade, I’ve come to value a more reflective, mindful pace of life. Careful consideration, staying in the moment, not sweating the small stuff, doing what you love and giving others the benefit of the doubt all seem far more important than the measures of success from earlier stages of life.

Braiding all that together — painting, travel, learning and teaching from a range of places and people, and taking time to do it with a spirit of compassion and curiosity — is what calls me now, in my sixth decade. There’s no need to be a painter. Anyone with an interest in the beautiful, and in taking time to appreciate the varied aspects of our world, will feel a sense of belonging.