Riding two horses: some initial thoughts on service, travel and personal power...

One horse is white, one is black. Or perhaps one is pale, the other a nice warm brown...
I've ridden one a lot, the other not that much. Both are always with us. Service and self-service. Who and what do we live for?
I've given too much before, and it's very disempowering. You end up drained, and no good for anything. Yet some people have given everything. Is that why JFK was such a philanderer? He just had to express some dark side somewhere? I'm not recomennding that. I'm not judging either.
I find I discover myself through travel. Not sure if that's the same for everyone.
I looked back on my last two blogs (my first two) and thought - I wonder what people get out of that? The first, so "I want to save everyone" the second, "no behaviour is wrong". Black and white horses. I think we must ride them both at once.
So, having these thoughts today, while also contemplating this dilemna: do I stay here, in the west, and find work as an environmenatl lawyer? That's what I set out to do, a few months ago. Or do I apply for some jobs afar, and if I don't get one from here - just go anyway?
The first is serving the world, the second; my self. Maybe. I can do good here, but deep in my gut I want to keep moving. There was something else I set out to do in this trip, and I have done it:
The first time I hitchhiked across Canada I returned home on my birthday, having been on the road 2 months, I was 19, I was completely drained of personal power. Completely. And I knew it.
The second time, well - was different. After travelling for 5 months I was primed and ready - supercharged - to do as I had always wanted since I was young - travel endlessly. Travel around the world, travel and work, travel and live, and completely be who I am. My Mom was sick. I went home.
I loved her, and it seemed like the right thing to do, I never gave it much thought. It was only a few years ago I started to question - was that the right thing to do, for me? I travelled a bit more, got married, took a different path.
An eagle gave me a white tail feather just after I turned 21 on the beach at Schooner Cove, Vancouver Island - dropped it on me as He flew over. I gave it away. It's another story, which I will tell another time. My friend Maya asked me - did the loss of it reflect the choices you were making? Perhaps.
I think everyone has to find their right balance, between darkness and light. This afternoon, a little bored and feeling at odds, I did this free 'tarotolgy card report' online. What the hell. It said my tarot card is the Chariot,

Those born to play the Chariot starring role are here to master the art of higher will.
...
That sounds simple enough, except you can spend a lifetime seeking the means to kick your ego out of the driver's seat. This makes you a quintessential Seeker and quest-bound soul. Like a knight of the round table, you will search far and wide for the holy grail -- the shortest route to enlightenment.

Pretty funny, kinda summed up my last two blogs, so I figure it had to go in. For those who haven't figured this out yet, this blog's pretty personal. I change people's names. But I'm not shy about who I am.
I think one of the things I like about travelling is if you run out of personal power - you crash and burn pretty quick. So you have to maintain it. Which requires living life more authentically.
While at Mt. Shasta, up there above the treeline, in the cold wind, alone, happy, simply happy like a child, it happenned. Later, while I was at the motel I was staying at, I realized what had happenned,  - I had reconnected with that part of me - that readiness of 21, to wander the world, and seek my own destiny. How many people get second chances in life?
I think I will probably keep travelling. It's mine, and I'm not going to give it away. Not yet, maybe not ever. Like the Pine.
I noticed years ago, while working in the woods in Nova Scotia, these giant old white pines on the sides of hills, near the top. Just now and then I'd see them, but their situation was always the same, give or take a decade or two of progress. They'd have a big semi-cleared area around them, and lots of room to grow and totally rule their hill. There were smashed, mangled, dead and crippled other trees in a circle around them, and a few big dead limbs from the pine on the ground.
I wondered about it for a while. I watched them. Finally I came up with a theory - around 80-120 yrs of age they 'crown off' or stop growing up, or at least their upward growth slows. They fatten, and shade out their lower limbs. The other trees around them keep growing up, as fast as they can. They think, "I'm gonna catch the Pine, I'm gonna be taller than her!" They shade out her lower limbs too. Ha.
Thinks the Pine.
Once those limbs die, weighing a ton or two each, they drop. And all the little upstarts are crushed. Killed or broken, shattered remants of their former ambitious selves. What a horrible nature story. I didn't know pine trees were mean. ;)
Until the storm. If the spruce were the tallest, or the fir, or the beech, they would blow down. Only the Pine can take that fierce eastern wind. The Pine protects them all, saves them all, breaks the wind. We are all one. We all have our place. The Pine lives between darkness and light, as we all do. There is no division.
The chariot ties those two horses together and the driver uses their divergent wills to create forward motion to reach his goal.
It may be selfish for me to keep travelling. I'm okay with that. I have a feeling it will open up new paths, new possibilities, that I could never have guessed.

A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

Without personal power one cannot be of service - it is the knight's sword. Maybe this is the simplest way to summarize it: you can use your sword for another, but you may not give it away.

We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are -
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.