Recently in Travel philosophy Category

Clive J. from the UK asked:

What do you know as a result of travel the rest of us don't?

I think the most important lessons are things we forget in the day to day, not things we don't know. 

When you're cut off out there on the road, the everyday frivolity of life at home - office politics, the rat race, "noble" ambitions, catching every episode of some stupid TV series - it all falls away until you're left with that pure, radiant core. You come to realize very quickly what is truly important to you. Traveling light, with all your necessities boiled down to what fits into your bag, you also realize what little you need to survive and what little you need to be happy. 

The road also teaches you to understand social networks and the way in which images and personas are shaped. You see the larger perspective, or the omniscient view perhaps, because you exist outside of the social structure of the places you're traveling through, and as such you aren't governed by their rules of conduct. You can act in a place without being a part of it. You're treated in a manner that doesn't reflect your past, your background, your accomplishments or your social status, a manner that only reflects the "you" that you present at that moment. It's incredibly revealing.

As for added knowledge, travel does give you a perspective on the wider world. It seems obvious to say it, but you realize that your philosophy and the philosophy and moral code of your culture doesn't apply everywhere else. People live differently and they get along just fine. The harshest culture shock is the one you experience on returning home. It causes you to question everything and to reject some of what you'd always taken for granted, foundational beliefs of your culture and your society. You come to realize what shaky intellectual ground we are all actually standing on.

Surely everyone realizes, at some point, that they are capable of living a far better life than the one they have chosen. What usually stops them is fear of the sacrifices involved.

It's necessary to be alone to become fully aware of the way that music recalls the past, provides a soundtrack to the present, and gives hope for the future.

For those of us who travel alone, music fills those empty nights closed in by the walls of concrete rooms. And it entrances us on long journeys by bus or rail, occupying the conscious mind and allowing insight to float up from the depths.

Some music is wrapped in memory right from the start. Those are the bits of local music you pick up along the way, the ones that trigger full stereophonic flashbacks of a particular bar, a beach or a dinner. Elvis Crespo's Suavamente was the favourite of a waitress at a restaurant on a remote Caribbean island. Early Shakira brings back a barbecue party in Costa Rica where I was the guest of honour. And 'Loleta' by Eric Donaldson calls up ghosts of a Nicaraguan beach, where the beer bottles sweated cold drops of bottle sweat, and the pages of my book puffed with fine white grains; where sandflies bit our legs, but it was all too perfect and we'd drunk too much to care.

Listening to those songs back home in our hyper-cynical world of synthetic furniture and fake wood doesn't cheapen sappy lyrics or reveal flaws in the mix. Instead, it brings it all back: the feelings, the slow lazy heatpace, the simplicity of life.

And then there's the music you take along with you.

That music you've heard so many times that you know every note, every pluck of a guitar, and every tremor or hesitation in the singer's voice. Those albums form the epic backing track of your trip. You listen to them over and over, and they soak up the landscape, the smells and the very feeling of the place. They colour the way you see it just as different shades of glass colour a sunny day.

My traveling soundtrack is invariably something by The Church.

Central America will always be Starfish and Gold Afternoon Fix.

My Mongolia is haunted by After Everything Now This and the b-sides of A Quick Smoke at Spots.

Japan is Remindlessness at 3am, when the writing was finished but I still couldn't sleep.

Through the cracked dusty glass of so many jeep windows, the vast, meticulous soundscapes of The Church tinted  my external landscape with emotion, even as the more poignant notes called up the melancholy of opportunities lost, of chances not taken, of phases recently come to a close.

The music imposed this on the countryside as it passed, and fused it into a total picture--a memory.

Borders signify change and a new beginning. They're a crossing over into unknown territory, evoking feelings of possibility that contain great hope as well as great fear. But borders are also a closing off. When we enter new terrain, we're closing off what came before both physically and philosophically. We can never go back. Nature allows no birth without a corresponding death.

Major life changes often slip by unnoticed. We never think to mourn the passing of our childhood until middle age. But I stopped one day in the middle of a dusty road at the edge of Nicaragua to look back at where I'd come from. I shed my skin, sloughed off what I'd been before, and emerged transformed and renewed. I put one foot forward, then another, and I stepped into a new future.

I came across a quote last week that I want to share with you.

It's taken from a letter that Charles Darwin--the Father of Evolution--wrote at the end of his life. He said:

"Up to the age of 30, or beyond it, poetry gave me great pleasure. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry. My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, and if I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music several times every week. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature."

Now I could care less about "moral character," but what Darwin wrote about making time really resonated with me.

As I write this blog, I'm in the midst of the hectic final launch phase of another fitness ebook package. It's the best ebook we've produced to date, and after three or four sleepless weeks of production it finally goes on sale tonight at midnight.

It's so easy to get caught up in work, especially when that work is well received.

Darwin's words are a reminder not to lose sight of the things that truly fulfill me, and not to marginalize that which I love the most.

They are a reminder to always defend that precious hour of reading time each day, no matter how much the work piles up. Reading is the fuel of good writing, and it's also a window on a larger world of thought, experience and ideas that span centuries. A life without reading is a life lived on the surface.

Darwin's words are a reminder to make time to plug in good headphones and really listen to music that means something. I used to do that a lot. These days I only do it on airplanes. When wifi reaches the air, I'll lose that space too.

Darwin's words are a reminder to leave on a regular basis. To drop off the map entirely, stop taking calls, stop replying to emails, and just wander alone in a country where I don't speak the language--no matter what the "project timeline" dictates. To find those special landscapes and spend entire days sitting at a café table, soaking up the feeling of that place, waiting for insights to float to the surface. Those are the only times I ever truly grow.

Finally, Darwin's words are a reminder that, while we each have many talents, we have only one true gift. You'll recognize yours immediately because it's the only one that doesn't feel like "work." I wear many hats, but I am at core a travel writer. That's all.

It can be easy to forget that core as life speeds up and pulls us each in.

Did anyone ever picture Darwin as a lover of poetry? Neither did I. In my imagination Darwin exists as a hard-headed, clear cut, bushy bearded man of science. But who knows what more he could have been if he hadn't accepted that mold.

What do Darwin's words mean to you?

And more importantly, what are you going to do about it?

All travelers agree that no trip has the same soul-shaking impact of that first time you set out alone on the road.

Looking back, I can see how necessary it had been for me to go to Central America. I had to leave home to acquire the necessary vision and experience, to come to an understanding of what it is to live for living's sake.

 There are times when we know that the way we are living is preventing us from truly living. It requires courage to take that first step, to follow your inner light when guilt, fear, habit, and other people are urging you to stay where you are. You must have great determination. That and imagination: the power to dream great dreams. As I learned during my first few days in Panama City, that first step is the hardest one of all.

Those who stay behind are forever bound by the box of their identity. It's possible to overcome it by remaining there, but the struggle is slower and success is more difficult.  As long as we continue to skim across the surface of our lives at high speeds, it's impossible to dig deeply. Clarifying your purpose takes time; quiet, uninterrupted time. That and isolation.

It's strange to think that after everything, when it's all over, you just quit. Your light simply goes out and you are no more. What I find saddest about that whole notion is all the questions left unanswered when we die. Nothing will be solved. No one will tell us what it was really all about. How we did. Worst of all, we'll never find the answers to all those nagging puzzles that haunt us.

We think of life as having a beginning, middle, and end. But it doesn't. It either ends abruptly or trails off. Either way, there are so many loose threads left dangling.

Our lives are the briefest of moments; they pass by like a dream. There's no second chance for those who fail to grasp it. Such people simply reach old age and live out the rest of their days in the hollow depths of remorse, with nothing to hold in their hands to show that they had lived except the dried remains of all that should have been--the discarded husks of their dreams.

Road Wisdom represents a way of travel, a way of seeing the world.

Road Wisdom is an absence of preconceived agendas, short of going deeper.

Road Wisdom is the collection of lessons imparted by the all-knowing road, if only you loose your grip long enough to get out of your own way and simply follow wherever it might lead you.

Road Wisdom has no time for the mundane, the 9 to 5, or the tick-tock world. It doesn't exist in the corporate. It seeks the distance, the time, the space, the essence--unapologetically.

Road Wisdom is firmly "Romantic" in the literary sense.

Road Wisdom embraces the inscription carved in the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi: "Know thyself".

Road Wisdom recognizes that once you set out upon this course, there is no turning back.

Vagabond Dreams Outtakes are "deleted scenes" from my book. Think of them as a "Special Features" disc for a DVD yet to be invented...

I had finally come to grips with my task. I pondered the question of how to turn living into something more than just existing.

Time is our worst enemy. Youth seldom considers time; it seems so endless. But youth is characterized by hopes and dreams, and old age is too often the realm of unrealized hopes and dreams. What's in between? Is that where I found myself at that moment? Or is there in fact no in between at all, just the sudden shock of realization that it's all ending and you haven't even begun?

With knowledge of the name and nature of one's adversary comes the power to take direct action. Here is the fork in the road. You can throw up your hands in despair -- it's all for nothing so why bother -- or you can grab Time by the throat and squeeze as much as you can out of it by way of experience. Both choices are equally valid. In the end it's all for nothing. Time is the predestined winner. The game is fixed. But I think the path of Experience is the more heroic of the two.

To pursue the path of Experience is to squeeze the most out of Time. The time-obsessed have no patience for triviality. I'm constantly amazed at how we nickel and dime our lives away on useless details and inane things: obligations, manipulations, pointless babbling phone calls, make-work projects for the sake of form. We bleed ourselves to death with a thousand tiny paper cuts. Refusing to drag around those anchors is a significant step towards finding freedom. Cut away the sandbags and your balloon will soar.

Busywork obscures the important things in life. The meaningful gets lost among the trash. Like a sculptor, we must cut away the unnecessary to reveal the minimalist core within. This includes cutting away unnecessary people: those relationships that drain you, those people who pull you down. In doing this, some will call you selfish. They want something from you. Their method is manipulation through guilt. You assume obligation; it isn't automatic.

Western society has lost touch with the vibrant core. We live our lives at second hand, through movies and TV. We've become middle class people made cowards by our possessions. Our lives are geared towards comfort, swaddled in narcoleptic routine. We've become afraid to live deeply, and so we live vicariously through fictional characters instead, and through the exploits of others. But that isn't living.

Leave the papers in the pile unshuffled, unstapled. Someone else will do it. And if no one does and they slowly turn to ash, their true importance will be revealed because not a fucking thing will change. The world won't end. But when Time is judged the victor of your lifelong duel, your world will end. It's your choice what to make of it. Do you leave a legacy of paper in tidy piles, or a rich store of experience that vanishes when you do? Only you can decide. You have only yourself to answer to. In the end the clock will win.

Life can't be lived by other people's rules, not society's and not religion's. The great philosophical discovery is that there aren't any answers. We put too much import on the questions anyway. We die and the dream dissolves with a hiss. We have an interval and that's all. All our moments, both significant and insignificant, will be lost in the mists of time. The Judgement Day question has nothing to do with morality. It is, in fact, "Was your life meaningful?"

This life is so tragically short, but we let so much pass by. We obsess over trivialities. We take on guilt and unhappiness through self-imposed judgements and labels. None of those things are real. Judgments and labels are so much smoke in the air. In the end nothing really matters much. You'll regret the things you didn't do more than the things you did.

The heroic path is to live! No regrets. No apologies. Roar at the top of your lungs and punch a hole in the sky! Cry hot salty tears and pull out your hair at the sheer cruelty of time! Laugh and love like a thousand Zorbas! When your light goes out let it end with a flash, not a fizzle.

'Live' is an active verb, not a passive one. Don't plod through life in the Third Person. Claim this brief life as your own and live it.

Sometimes opportunity really will knock only once.

Vagabond Dreams Outtakes are "deleted scenes" from my book. Think of them as a "Special Features" disc for a DVD yet to be invented...

From The Philosophy of Zachary Peoples:

 Page 12: "I dunno, man. Philosophy's interestin', but I think that what you believe has to come from inside yourself, ya know? No one can teach you how to examine and make sense of life. Anyone who thinks so, well, I feel sorry for 'em."

Page 23: "I believe this is the only life we can be sure of. I live my life as best I can, I treat people respectfully and try to experience all I can or all that appeals to me. If this is it and I spent my life as an accountant and got a pension, I'd feel pretty shitty about myself. Of course there's reincarnation, 'cause matter and energy are never destroyed, right? But as far as me living again as a hedgehog so I can think about how I fucked up, I doubt it. I hope there's an afterlife and a heaven where I can play ping pong with Jack Kerouac all day, but I doubt it."

Page 34: "I don't see my life as any more valuable than that of a drunken bum. I can see a bit of him in me and me in him. If you look closely you can see that kinship in everyone. Some people on this rock really need to try that."

Page 40: I try to live a righteous life, I don't bother anyone. I help folks when I can and try not to cause any major trouble. I think I'll get through those pearly gates anyway, if they exist. And if God doesn't wanna let me in 'cause I didn't do it all in his name, then I don't wanna be hangin' around the arrogant bastard anyway. Besides, all the good conversations'll be going on in hell."