I enjoyed reading Colin Wright’s book “Iceland India Interstate”, because…

1) Colin intrigues me as a person. He is a serial entrepreneur and a full time traveler. His readers vote for his destinations and he lives in chosen countries for 4 months.

2) I like his writing style. It’s calm and unpretentious.

3) This book is based on his experiences. It’s essentially about how Colin met Jóna and about their trip.

4) Colin talks about the topics I’m interested in. If you are interested in long term travels, freedom, personal growth, open relationships, and the like, you will enjoy reading it, I believe.

Colin’s book made me think of the following topics: open relationships, honesty, jealousy, and freedom. I want to share my thoughts with you.

Open relationships
I don’t think I have specifically mentioned this before, but I’m an open relationship type of guy. The reason why I choose to be this way is a conclusion derived from some of the beliefs I have.

Being open means that being in a relationship with one person doesn’t exclude being in a relationship with another person.

Likewise, I believe that there’s no end to a relationship unless you completely forget about that relationship. Whether you are physically with someone doesn’t matter, but whether you have great memories with that person matters more to me. I want to continue my relationships with people in this sense. I don’t close them. I leave them open.

The rest of the topics I mentioned above are, in fact, relevant to open relationships very much.

Honesty
Honesty is important in any kind of relationship. Being honest doesn’t necessarily mean being hurtful or violent.

Being honesty is also about being open. Sharing your thoughts and feelings as honestly as possible is, I believe, essential in any kind of relationship, not just in open relationships. So, note that I’m not saying being in an exclusive relationship entails some kind of dishonesty.

How honest are you? I’m working on being more and more honest.

Jealousy
Somehow, I became one of the world’s least jealous guys in the last few years, though I wasn’t that jealous to begin with. In the context of relationship, I believe it’s probably because I let go of the possessive thinking.

Colin makes a good point about jealousy.

Getting rid of jealousy opens all kinds of doors, and what do you give up in the tradeoff? Feeling like crap, and the desire to make others feel like crap. Bitterness. The feeling that you are less than someone else, when in reality you’re only comparing your inside with someone else’s outside (which is never a fair comparison).

If you get jealous easily… why? Just like worrying won’t solve any problems and it will give you some extra stress, jealousy won’t give you what you want either. You can train yourself to be less jealous. Do you think it would be better for you if you were less jealous?

Freedom
Freedom is one of my core values. There may be a number of constraints around you, but you can still be free. In fact, I believe you are already free in one sense, because you can be aware of choices you have and make your own decisions. I believe this is the most important kind of freedom as well.

And it’s great when you can give that freedom… or rather, when you don’t restrict that freedom by binding others. Again, it doesn’t matter whether you are in an open relationship or in an exclusive relationship.

There’s a King Arthur story that Colin’s book reminded me of. You can read it here. In short, it’s about giving someone sovereignty… freedom of choice… allowing someone (a woman, in this story) to choose on his/her own.

You’re giving a gift when you can let others be who they are and even who they want to be.

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If what I wrote above made you think, there’s a great chance you’ll enjoy Colin’s book. You can read the first chapter of the book from his site.

I’m curious to know what your thoughts are on these topics as well. Let’s talk.