The Best Things In Life Come Easy

1 month ago I moved to Bali, Indonesia. It began with my brother Rieki Cordon simply wanting me to visit and very quickly turned into me being given 35 acres of beautifully terraced land to turn into a Permaculture food forest. Interestingly enough the same thing happened 4 months ago to a, not as nice, but still awesome piece of land in Hong Kong. 5 months ago the idea of doing a Permaculture farm was the long term plan and never could I have guessed that it would be happening so quickly.

Now as I ponder the current circumstances of my life I realize that I have had a pretty amazing journey thus far and for my own benefit it would be great if I had a place to write all my stories down some being some old skeletons reminding me how I got here and others about more current thoughts. If they also happen to be of use to other people that is really just a plus!

First and foremost I can introduce myself. My name is Jared Cordon I'm 23 and I am from the United States. I went to High School near Rochester, New York and then studied in Provo, Utah at Brigham Young University. After 1 year of university I decided I had enough and I chose to spend the rest of my pennies and go and serve a volunteer mission for my church. They sent me to Hong Kong, China, where I then served for 2 years. There is an amazing story behind my mission which I'll share in a later post. After some of the fondest, yet most life changing, times of my life I returned home and decided to go back to school. After studying for a semester I followed a strong invitation from my brother who wanted me to join him in building sustainable communities in Belize, Central America. Choosing to leave school so quickly after just returning was a shocker for my family and friends, many of which who strongly advised against it. But I had a strong feeling it was where God(or universe, however you see things) needed me to be to continue to teach and direct me. Again a very interesting and powerful story is behind that experience as well. While in Central America I learned some new and amazing things that I had never heard of, Permaculture being one of those, and maybe San Pedro might be another I wanna talk about later. In my life up tell this point I just wanted to be a CEO of some company and get fat rich so I could have huge yachts and nice cars, well after my first week long fast I was taken by surprise when I saw with more clarity that my path was leading in a whole different direction. My time in Hong Kong changed my life in profound ways but I guess Central America was really the capstone. Still not a profound enough change because after working the summer in Texas I decided to go and drop more money into school. Quickly I realized that it was not satisfying me and thoughts of Hong Kong came floating in and stirring in my mind. I couldn't focus anymore I knew I needed to get to China and learn Mandarin. So I made all the necessary arrangements and in a series of crazy occurrences met two other guys doing the exact same thing and we became great friends real fast. One of them Nate Rollins is still with me on this journey now. China was an amazing experience and we went into that with no job and no plan just a plane ticket. After leaving Hong Kong and heading into Shenzhen we met a lot of amazing friends who connected us with a job up north in a city called Xuzhou and so we went. After working that job for a bit we realized that we needed a change of pace and then the invitation for Bali came.

What I have learned from this experience Is the importance of agency without control. I don't create my vision I receive it as I yield my heart to God and the Universe. I find the greatest confirmation of me being on the right path is how easily things just happen. I am not saying there hasn't been moments where it required a lot of effort but when I was following my heart it was always fun and I was always successful. Learning to not rely on the acceptance of others to determine my happiness has been key to yielding to my hearts desires and not just cultural obligations has been one of the most difficult principles that I have ever learned.

So much has happened in these last few years and I truly couldn't be happier, I have some funny, tear jerking and miracle stories that I will be sharing as well over time.

Jared Cordon