Oh I get it, I thought, they’re going to ask me for money.
At first I was flattered to receive an email from a pair of Singaporean women inviting me to an event for their documentary. They had heard about my website (when I read that I fanned myself lightly with my hand to calm my blush of famousness). They wanted to hear my story and include it in their film. I looked up their project and saw they were biking around the world talking about dreams.
A little cliché, but still kind of cool...
Then I saw the part about them not having any money and my eyes narrowed. Living in the world of Liberal Arts hipsters for too long unavoidably results in desensitization to the girl/boy-next-door hero types who come up with completely nonprofitable ideas, create a blog and set up PayPal accounts for all the suckers sappy enough to throw cash donations at their projects called “Knitting for Peace” or “Photography for Women’s Rights.” Yeah, yeah, yeah, wouldn’t we all like to save the world by posting mini-memoirs about our hobbies (and make a living at the same time).
But my inflated ego at the mention of my website was a stronger force that my cynicism... so I went.
And that’s when I met Tay.
Tay is a highly successful and award-winning film director who left her job, her company, her home and her family to pursue something she wasn’t even sure how to define. She is not a cyclist. She’s not a hipster. She’s just a girl who found something worth risking everything for and she went for it. She’s a storyteller.
At the meeting, she spoke for an hour and a half and it felt like five minutes had passed. Story after incredible story of the journey she embarked on with her partner Val two years ago captivated everyone in the room. Nothing too dramatic, just accounts of random adventures, failures and lessons learned, all told with the intention to inspire us to follow our own dreams. It sounds cheesy, but somehow--in spite of my jaded bias against all things humanitarian--it got to me.
She presented me with a romantically simplistic version of life: do what you love and share it with others.
Although it won’t likely have the same effect to read about it online, you can see more about their project (and yes, how to support them) here:
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