Today, on the 90th birthday of the late Maya Angelou, we are riding a bus across Argentina. It is flat, dry, and lime green.

I like our travel days because they focus my mind. I usually read and listen. And then I think and sometimes I write. There’s little else for my busy mind to do. And for me this is important. It is a sort of practice of mindfulness and reflection in a contained and restrained environment devoid of sights to see and distractions to distract.

It is often on days like today I find myself most present.

I am currently reading Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. But it is a separate quote of hers I love the most. She writes:

Isn’t that beautiful? The idea of wonder, of surprise, and of the beauty that attaches to both. The not knowing what will be seen, learned, met, felt. The utter unpredictability of life, of even life itself.

As I listened to an interview today with Stephen Batchelor, a self-proclaimed secular Buddhist, something he said rang clearly true. He said:

He asks himself this question everyday, indeed he carries it around within himself in every moment. And rather than forcing a focus on death and darkness, he describes it as the best reminder of his aliveness.

I have also found this to be true. It is why I cherish this moment of travel. The flat, dry, lime green landscape today. The relationship with my partner by my side. And the opportunity to immerse myself in a unique expression of culture and humanity.

I like how Pico Iyer put it in the following quote:

It is in moments like the present, when a wonderful day meets a receptive mind on a double decker bus somewhere outside Córdoba, that I know the answer to the question of what I should be doing. And it is exactly what I am.