Around the World in Seven Years: A Life-Changing Journey

By Julie Salisbury

Julie Salisbury had a spectacular epiphany in 1998 that made her walk away from her husband, her high-powered job, and her Victorian house in the UK, and exchange them for a backpack and a dream. She spent the next seven years living in South Africa, Madagascar, Tanzania, Kenya, on an Indian Ocean desert island, in Thailand, Malaysia, Mexico, and C

• Language: English
• Publisher: Influence Publishing
• Release date: Feb 12, 2015
• ISBN: 9781771411820

Book preview

Introduction

Seven years. Seven years travelling around the world (1998-2004) and seven years since I first told my story in 2008. It seemed appropriate that I should revisit what finding purpose really means to me, seven years after I first published my book. I wanted to reflect how travelling around the world changed my life. How did burning my bridges to the UK affect my decisions going forward? Did I know I was searching for purpose, or did I just think I was chasing the dream of love? Haven’t I just returned back where I started, working twelve-hour days but for way less pay? I know I am a very different person to the one who left the UK in 1998 with a backpack and a dream, but how did this experience make me the person I am now?

It happened slowly, mostly unconsciously. I was an observer of different cultures, different values and beliefs, different environments, different people, different countries. My former self was slowly being woken up by all that I saw around me. I saw love, real love, real community—mostly in less-developed countries that only had love to fall back on.

When I lived in the UK, I didn’t think love was real. I had convinced myself it was the elusive feeling that advertising told me I could only achieve by smelling the right way, wearing the right clothes, living in the right house, and being successful in the right career. I saw it rarely, so it must only exist if you succeeded in all those things. Then you could have it all and sail off into the sunset on a shiny white yacht with a handsome smiling husband by your side.

I was sailing off into the sunset, but my yacht was steel and painted blue with rust marks, and my handsome husband was a penniless backpacker with bad teeth and a balding head, who said this was a win–win—you’ve got the cash; I’m a skipper.

Did I know what I was getting myself into? I knew nothing about sailing, living on a boat, offshore cruising, survival, or how I would feel at sea a thousand miles from the nearest land with no refrigeration, no fresh water, no shower, and no decent food. What kind of dream did I think I would be living? Did I really think this would turn out to be the true love I was searching for? A life of adventure, the easy life like I saw on the posters in the bank—the happy smiling couple anchored off a powder-white sand beach in turquoise waters framed by jumping dolphins and palm trees?

I was only thirty-two and I was about to set off for my retirement. I did not hesitate to burn all my bridges; this was the chance of a lifetime and I had no plans to go back.

Finding my purpose would not have been possible without writing this book—without journals and letters that allowed me to retrace the steps, find the clues to purpose, and consciously figure out how I arrived where I am today. The understanding that we don’t figure out this thing called life until we make the decision to examine it, does not start until you write. When you write, the clues appear before you as your life unfolds one page at a time. You start to understand which event led to the next event, how your feelings changed through these experiences, and how life became more.

The book gave birth to a new me: one with more clarity and focus about what led me to the place I am at now, a conscious choice to follow my heart, trust my intuition and live authentically. At the time, I had no idea that it was the book that changed my life, rather than the travelling around the world. Which came first to finding purpose in my life—the subject of the book or the book itself? I felt like I had suddenly come alive. It was the book that was giving me my direction.

When you live a life on purpose, the whole world suddenly lights up because it’s not just about you anymore. Is that what opens up the world of love? You hear so much about being of service, but are we designed as humans to only function as part of the whole if you actually ARE part of the whole?

Is that what I witnessed in those less-developed countries? Is the reason those people smile so much and give so much love (when they don’t even have the basic human rights of food, water, and shelter) because they are acting as a community, in service to one another? Is that what I witnessed in Chagos when I lived on a desert island for three months in the company of other boats? People who needed to be of service to one another to survive?

Is being of service in community the basic human condition, whereas money, materialism, and consumerism have made it all about the individual person?

If I had found this purpose during my travels, would the colours have been brighter, the memories clearer, the feelings deeper, the experiences richer? Would I have remembered any of what happened in those seven years without photos, journals, and letters? Why did I have such a weak vision of those experiences? Why does it feel I am reading about someone else when I read my journals, and now seven years later, when I re-read my book? Did this really happen to me? Am I the only person to circumnavigate the world and not remember very much about it because I wasn’t actually awake the whole time?

So, this book is not really about the travel stories, although I am sure you will enjoy reading about them (I did, since it gave me the chance to relive them). I sometimes feel that I journaled about the first four years of my travel like a naive observer of the many cultures and countries I visited.

If love had entered earlier in this story, the reflections would have been easier to capture, but that was not meant to be. I could only keep the experiences intact and vulnerable by sharing my journal notes and letters about how I felt in that moment.

This book—my book—is really about the journey of waking up through the process of writing a book about my journey. Writing a book about your journey will bring you to life, wake you up, allow you to retrace your steps and the clues of your life, and open up your heart (if you are willing to be vulnerable). It is a journey that will lead to colours being brighter, memories more vivid, and your heart being open to letting love in.

Only when your heart opens to the possibilities will you allow love in. This is the most beautiful thing in the world: opening to love that was always there while you were just not awake enough to see it.

My purpose is to help the world wake up and welcome in love by suggesting you revisit your life and follow the clues to find your purpose through writing your story. It will be a hard journey, but as you become the observer in your life, the clues will lead to your purpose. I often wonder how these experiences of travelling around the world would have been different with my eyes wide open.

This second edition of Around the World in Seven Years retains my journal entries and diary excerpts of my world travels by sea from 1998 to 2004, plus my original writing from 2008, when I first wrote my book. I’ve added in Year 2015 reflections on my journey—a journey that began physically and became purposeful through mental, emotional, and spiritual reflection.

Chapter One

Enlightenment

Enlightenment: A Philosophic movement of the 18th Century marked by questioning of traditional doctrines and values, a tendency towards human individualism, and an emphasis on the idea of universal human progress, the empirical method in science, and the free use of reason.

Oxford English Dictionary

I am the happiest I have ever been in my whole life. I am a true nomad. I spend the summers in beautiful British Columbia (BC), living in my RV, and the winters in Mexico, on my sailboat. I do not own a house and I live on a tight budget with very few belongings. I am living my passion of helping others to write their books, which I discovered to be my purpose. It is 2008.

Ten years ago I was living in England in a beautiful three-bedroom Victorian house overlooking the golf course, earning $90,000 a year, and driving a Mercedes-Benz. I had an extraordinary career, which involved travelling Business Class around the world, and I was married to the perfect husband.

Yet, I felt deeply discontented with life and felt something really important was missing—I just didn’t know what.

It all started in 1998. I was thirty-two and I didn’t want for anything. I spent my days rising at 7:00 a.m., driving for an hour to the office in my Mercedes, working for ten hours a day, and dashing home in time for Coronation Street on the TV and a microwave dinner. Repeat until Saturday. Saturday: go shopping and spend as much money as I wanted on whatever took my fancy. Sunday: visit the golf club with my husband and friends.

This seemed to be the life everyone was living, so I really didn’t understand why I was so unhappy and bored. After all, I had a great job with a great salary and perks. I thought it was maybe a mid-life crisis, but surely I was too young for that?

Graeme, my best friend of twelve years, had just returned from travelling for the last two, and I knew as soon as we got together that I could really open up to him and try and explain how I was feeling. I was really looking forward to seeing him; we always had great, honest conversations, and his absence made me realize how much I had missed him.

So, you got married while I was away? Sorry I missed the wedding. Out came all the photos, followed by some real truths that I realized I’d never discussed with anyone before.

The thing is, Graeme, I know John isn’t exciting, but he’s 80 percent of what any woman would want from a good husband. He is caring, we talk non-stop, and help each other constantly by off-loading all our problems with work. He isn’t the greatest love and I always feel I come fourth in line to his work, his golf, and his child from his previous marriage, but it’s a lot more than most people are lucky enough to find.

I wondered who I was trying to convince.

So what is it, Julie? Time to change jobs again? asked Graeme.

Well, yes, but I need to do something completely different; a new challenge. I need some excitement in my life.

Well, I know what you mean; I know exactly what I want from my life now that I’ve been travelling. I’ve come back to the UK to save enough money, and then I’m going to buy a yacht and sail around the world.

A pipe dream, Graeme? I said with a smile on my face. He was always a dreamer. But, what the heck, sounds like a good plan. Can I come with you?

I remember that conversation so well, because it was ironic. That was the kind of spontaneous thing I wanted to do with my life.

People often say, I don’t know what I want, but I know what I don’t want. Well, I knew, but I had far too much responsibility to have Graeme’s freedom. He had no ties, no wife, no house, and no career or need to fit into society. He was a free agent and at the end of the day, he was my best friend and I’d only just got married.

Despite all the odds against it, it all happened very fast following that first reunion. I wanted to see more of Graeme, but he had to find work, so I suggested he redecorate my kitchen for a generous fee. John knew Graeme was my best friend, so he had no problem with him staying at our house for a couple of weeks.

I’m sure he now regrets that decision, because in the time that Graeme was staying at our house, I started to have fun again and I fell in love with my best friend. By the time I’d realized what had happened, Graeme told me that he’d always loved me, but would never do anything to influence my feelings toward him. The feelings I had for him were completely overwhelming, and I was being the ultimate bitch to my husband, but I simply couldn’t help myself. To deny how I felt would be selling my soul, but to leave everything? I didn’t think twice about it. I just knew it was the right thing to do.

I suddenly had a whole new perspective on life, but I knew John, my family, and my friends would not understand why I had to throw away my perfect marriage, house, job, and possessions to run away with a long-haired hippy with no prospects.

John took it very badly. I tried to keep Graeme a secret because I thought it would make it worse, but in the end, it was the only way I could get him to understand what I was doing. How could he understand otherwise how I had changed so suddenly? He tried everything to win me back, and boy, did that hurt, but I needed to go through that pain myself to test my own beliefs in my new way of life. I never looked back, and once Graeme and I decided that we were going to live our dream, life changed very quickly. All the things that were once so important—expensive clothes, make-up, possessions, eating out—suddenly meant nothing to me.

For six months, Graeme and I did nothing except work and save money. We moved into a tiny bedsit above a butcher’s shop, which had a miniature two-ring camper stove, an old settee, a double bed, and a view of the public car park. Graeme made bread, and I took peanut butter sandwiches to work every day to save on the cost of pub meals or takeouts. We didn’t have a television and we didn’t go out.

For the first time in my life, I worked for one reason only: to make money. And I hated every moment of it. Now I had nothing in common with the other high-fliers I worked with. I couldn’t talk about films or television programs. I’d sold all my designer clothes, so I obviously didn’t discuss the latest fashion or my spending sprees at Kookaï. I sold all my gold jewellery, and once the Estée Lauder ran out, that was the end of that. Shunning normal society and protocol, I didn’t fit in anymore. The only reason I stuck at it was the date I was clinging onto when we would fly to South Africa to look for our yacht and sail into the sunset with no expectations or accomplishments to comply to. One month after my devastating decision to leave my husband, beautiful home, and great job to travel around the world, I looked back at my diary and read my own words, which actually sounded quite sane.

Diary Excerpt: April 14th, 1998

Nearly a month later, it feels clearer already. I’ve been conditioned from birth, through childhood and adulthood, for an expected way of life. Parents endeavour to give their children the best so, in turn, we can also give our children the best. Whatever the definition of best is, it tends to mean material belongings. When you achieve this, what do you do then?

I did achieve everything expected of me but I made the mistake of thinking I was doing it for myself.

Suddenly I feel wise now that I’ve had the big responsible job, which comes with the immense car, big salary, and foreign travel and, of course, reverence and recognition. Now that I’ve lived in the large house with the nice garden, had the social friends of the same status and, to top it all, had the big white wedding, I’m wise. I’ve suddenly realized I’ve achieved what Mum, Dad, relatives, and friends told me I was supposed to achieve.

I suppose I felt special because I had overachieved until suddenly I realized I wasn’t doing this for myself. I was habituated to this way of life; I didn’t even consider there was an alternative.

My friend Tanya is someone I’ve always admired. She made the decision to look for another life travelling, and she’s still doing it four years on. I still admire her but somewhere, I think, she may have gotten lost again. We always managed to meet, as she backpacked around the world and I travelled for business. The first time I hadn’t seen her for twelve months and I wrote to say I was due in Hong Kong in three weeks, we made a joke of it and said, Let’s do lunch in Hong Kong, and we did. I will never forget the way she really appreciated staying the night in a business hotel and hopped off with the mini soaps and shampoo, and most of my wardrobe.

After that, we always tried to meet up when I did my trips to the Far East. We always had such a giggle shocking everyone in the bar with her backpacker clothes and hair. But then, when she left Hong Kong and I was due to go out again for the third year, I thought, Shit! Why do I want to sit on a plane for twelve hours, eat terrible food, live in a rabbit cage for three weeks, and visit hot slave-labour factories in China?

I realized I didn’t actually enjoy it that much but I thought it was cool to meet my best friend for lunch and brag or tell people, Oh, I’m leaving for Hong Kong on Friday or Did I tell you the time … blah, blah? As soon as I didn’t have Tanya to meet there, it completely lost all its appeal.

So I left the job (usually, after two and half years I get bored and look for a new challenge), and consciously went for one that meant I didn’t have to go to New York or Detroit or Frankfurt or Amsterdam. Most importantly, I wouldn’t have to visit the Far East for two weeks at a time. My next round of trips was going to start again, and I had to get out before that.

I traded that job for one that didn’t require international travel and paid an even bigger salary. It seems most people consider international business travel a perk before they have to do it regularly. But, of course, that didn’t help. I’d just traded in one type of travel for another; to sit on the M1 or M25 motorways, sit on trains and tubes, and stay in different slightly larger concrete cells they fondly call hotels.

I was at a loss. How could I stop this sadistic cycle? I had no idea what the alternatives were.

Well, if you take down the shutters of convention and expectations, you’d be very surprised. There’s a whole world out there to be enjoyed; not to live to work, but to work to live, experience, and enjoy. I always made excuses why I couldn’t go travelling, like I was too small/not strong enough/couldn’t cope without the luxuries in life/needed to work in order to have a challenge and achieve. Anyway, how could you find someone you’re so comfortable with that could share it with you, rather than go alone?

I’ve also realized, perhaps without fully realizing it, that I am a woman (strange as that sounds) with the needs of a woman. Man was historically a cave man, to hunt, protect, and provide for the woman. A woman has a different set of skills from a man, like multitasking and nurturing, whereas men tend to focus on one task at a time (like hunting and protecting). Despite being the independent woman, I’ve realized I need a man I can share this with. The reason I now say things are clearer is that I’ve found that man. The fact is I actually found him twelve years ago. I’m just a bit slow and I guess I needed to go through the process of accomplishment to understand that you really do have other choices in life.

So now I work for a different reason, to earn money. To save so I can now choose an unconventional way of life. This does mean that the motorway travelling, selling, and staying in concrete hotel rooms are even harder to bear. The difference is now it’s for a reason and I’m clinging onto a date six months down the line when we can cruise into the sunset.

When I read that later, I think, Wow, girl, you were brave. But I also remember the incredible pain I caused my family and friends at the time. Seven years later, I realize that I had been raised like a magician who observes and analyzes, then remembers things so that I could be graded. We all are. We then work hard and put in the time to prove our knowledge, but mostly we forget that our true purpose in life comes down to our relationships. We’re too busy adapting our energy to fit into our traditional tribe, which in the first world mostly ignores the importance of community. Maybe it was my experience of learning the less-developed world’s tribal ways that broke that vicious cycle. When I discovered this, only then could I start to consider what would make my life more complete.

Diary Excerpt: April 20th, 1998

Of course, to eschew traditional society means you will unavoidably cause a lot of hurt to those close to you who understand nothing other than this way. Family will not understand, but I hope mine will eventually. Close friends do understand, but they are the easy ones. Why would a person who has succeeded within society, suddenly, in three weeks, want to throw it all away?

Parents who are from a different generation that lived their whole lives conservatively (and clearly remember the rationing that war caused) find it the hardest. They expect you to live up to their image of success, and don’t really want to encourage you to grow as an individual; they want you to be what they couldn’t be. I remember telling my parents I was going to the Far East on a business trip and was astonished by the reaction. I expected them to be delighted, not worried, because I thought I was living up to their expectations of success. Of course, once I came back in one piece without any deadly diseases, it was easier for them to accept my departure the second year. By the third year, they were able to ask me in casual conversation when my next trip was due, as though, now, it was a normal way of life (and because their peers were impressed that their daughter was going on such exotic business trips).

Leaving my husband was not so easy. Within the way of life I was leading, John was the perfect husband. He loved me, he cared about my work, and we talked and helped each other with our careers, socialised with our work friends, and lived in a wonderful dream house with a dream garden. Everyone now says, You lucky girl. Why throw all that away? I can simply answer that he was perfect for that way of life. Once careers, houses, possessions, colleagues to impress, and cozy living were not important to me anymore, he was no longer perfect. The fact that our first wedding anniversary was only three weeks after I made the decision, made the pain even more difficult.

I was determined to make a new life work, and it seemed that my new attitude to life was already causing dislike of the material world.

Diary Excerpt: June 17th, 1998

I’m now getting very intolerant and really despise work. It’s getting progressively more difficult to cope with the driving (my back has started to play up again), and the politics are insufferable. Graeme keeps saying, Only ten weeks to go. And I know I really need to stick at it to make the last of the money we need. It would be so easy to avoid the horrible bit, but it really is the quickest way to make money. I now carry a picture of a Roberts 45 sailing yacht with me, and every time I’m tempted to tell them to stuff it, I look at the picture of the boat and remember why I’m still working. It really isn’t that much longer. It’s a shorter timescale than when I first started this diary.

We’re really moving up a gear in the preparation. I now know the phonetic alphabet, which is used for radio transmissions to avoid misunderstandings. It’s actually fun spelling out my name that way—Juliet, Uniform, Lima, India, Echo—and I try and use it whenever I can—even on the telephone at work when someone needs something spelled out. Graeme did his Yachtmaster theory exam last week and hopes to do the practical before we leave. I’ve become really confident about Aromatherapy and believe I can trade with it. I’ve made quite a few blends and treat all our own ailments with oils now, and they work. I’m sure you need a natural feel for it and I really enjoy doing it. I’d like to get a professional diploma for practising, but the ones available seem very superficial and expensive. For now, I might wait until we get to South Africa and see if I can get a correspondence course to study.

I really can’t wait for our new way of life, and so I don’t want to wait for a divorce and a settlement. I’ll probably end up having to leave behind the problems of my old life, like the house, marriage affairs, etc., unfinished. I might regret it, but the only compromise from