Someday

During my trip through Scandinavia, I spent several days near Narvik in northern Norway. I was traveling with a tent, and up there the weather was pretty rough. Some nights temperatures dropped to around freezing, my tent froze and in the morning even the car was covered in ice. Northern Norway is beautiful, but at that time of year it can also be wild, especially when you're sleeping outside.

At some point, while I was near Narvik, I had to decide what to do next. Continue south through Norway on the E6 or take the E10 back into Sweden. I honestly couldn't decide. Both sounded good for different reasons.

So I flipped a coin. Sweden won.

I took the E10 back across the border and later ended up near Jokkmokk, sitting by a beautiful lake in northern Sweden. The sun was out, the weather was beautiful and I had no idea where I would be a few days later. Somehow that felt exactly right.
Sitting there, I started thinking about someone I hadn't thought about in a while.

When I was still working a regular job, we had a customer I never forgot. He was a little older than me, a really good guy. He had a family, friends, a house, a good job, was active in his local community and had recently gotten married. From the outside, you could say he had everything. Then he became seriously ill with cancer. One of his biggest dreams was to travel to Norway.
He never made it there. When he was already too sick to make the journey, his friends gave him a book about Norway instead. I still remember hearing that story and thinking about the fact that this place he had dreamed about seeing with his own eyes had become something he could only look at on a page.

That stayed with me.

I remember promising myself that I didn't want to keep postponing the things that really mattered to me until "someday." Because sometimes, someday never comes.

Years later, I had just spent several days in the country he always wanted to see. I drove thousands of kilometers to get there. It wasn't always comfortable, the weather didn't always cooperate and I changed my plans more than once.

But that's also part of it.

Doing the things you dream about doesn't mean everything will be perfect when you finally do them. Sometimes the tent freezes. Sometimes the weather sucks. Sometimes you change direction and let a coin decide where you're going next.

The important thing is that you went.

Sitting there that day, I mostly felt grateful. Grateful that I'm healthy enough to make a journey like this and that I have the freedom to change my plans along the way.

And I'm grateful for Hip-Hop.

What started many years ago simply because I loved making music somehow turned into a life that allows me to make a living from my creativity. My beats travel around the world and become part of other people's songs and stories. At the same time, music has given me the freedom to live my own.

None of that is something I want to take for granted.

The older I get, the less I feel like I understand life. The more I see, learn and experience, the more I realize how little I actually know. And strangely enough, I like that. It keeps me curious, humble and grateful.

I don't know how many days I have. None of us do.

But I know I don't want to spend the ones I have waiting for the perfect time to do the things that matter to me.

Norway was the dream of someone who never got the chance to see it. He probably never knew it, but his story taught me something I've carried with me for many years.

Sitting by that lake in Sweden, I thought about him again.

If something truly matters to you, don't keep saving it for someday.