Taipei, Taiwan

How did I end up in Asia?

Welcome to Taipei.  This is me standing in front of the National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in the capital and largest city of Taiwan, an independent island nation off the coast of China.  Things eastern can seem very foreign to a world traveler from the western hemisphere, travelling east for the first time.  Being in Asia is very different from life in the west.  The food, language, and culture seem so foreign.  How I got here seems so surreal looking back, the transformation, the heartbreak, the turning of events all worked together to bring me here for some purpose that I may never come to realize.

My name is Jared.  I am in my mid 20's, and have my entire life lived in North Carolina.  I was so ambitious once.  I graduated high school with honors then even earned my bachelor’s degree from Campbell University, also in NC.  I made good grades and took a job in the capital city, Raleigh, NC.  I had a beautiful girl friend, who everyone ‘knew’ would soon be my wife.  Then we would have a few children and I would have ‘arrived’.  Yes, I was soon to realize the American Dream.

Just before my twenty-fourth birthday, I said No!  I woke up and realized that the American dream was not my dream.  I realized that I could not be satisfied with the mundane existence of work, wife, mortgage, kids, and church.  I offered my employer a 30 day notice of resignation despite concerns by my parents, family members, and financial advisor.  I was standing against the establishment.  Standing against the establishment in the middle of the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression, I had surely lost my mind. 

There is a way that you should do the things you are “supposed to do”.  Good things: go to church, pray, work hard, save for retirement, get married, have kids.  The good things that are clearly the way life is supposed to be lived out, somehow began to get more and more blurry.  As I refocused I noticed something out of the ordinary.  Many of the things I was “supposed to do”, I wasn’t and many things I “wasn’t”, well those were the very things that I was. 

My life was turning south—literally.  I didn’t know how far south it was taking me exactly, but with a one-way direct flight out of the Queen City, Charlotte, NC, to Rio de Janeiro, Brasil life was definitely taking me south!  I was twenty-four and running from everything known, everything safe, everything stable, everything me!  The only problem was I literally, did not know where I was headed, or how I would get there.  They say if you don’t know where your going you might end up somewhere else, ironically enough, I was quit welcoming of this possibility.