Not long since, a strolling Indian went to sell baskets at the house of a well-known lawyer in my neighborhood. "Do you wish to buy any baskets?" he asked. "No, we do not want any," was the reply. "What!" exclaimed the Indian as he went out the gate, "do you mean to starve us?" Having seen his industrious white neighbors so well off,--that the lawyer had only to weave arguments, and by some magic wealth and standing followed, he had said to himself; I will go into business; I will weave baskets; it is a thing which I can do. Thinking that when he had made the baskets he would have done his part, and then it would be the white man's to buy them. He had not discovered that it was necessary for him to make it worth the other's while to buy them, or at least make him think it was so, or to make something else which it would be worth his while to buy. I too had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but I had not made it worth any one's while to buy them. Yet not the less, in my case, did I think it worth my while to weave them, and instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them. The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of others. ~Henry David Thoreau, Walden
I chose to post this quote because I feel it demonstrates the reasoning of many of the drifters and travelers I have met while abroad, as well as those that follow a more unconventional lifestyle, which, I feel traveling generally tends to bring about. I think it also relates to the title of this post: "Why I travel," and I believe this quote illustrates, at least somewhat, the logic behind my desire to travel. Although I do find it worth my while to weave the journeys I embark on, they usually are not aimed toward the ordinary reward many seek.
For me, travel engenders feelings that I usually can not find through other means, and it keeps something inside me alive. If I were to create my own thesaurus (where all the definitions were defined by my own interpretation), travel would be synonymous with freedom. Yes that is right, when you flipped open Ryan Rafferty's Pocket Thesaurus and sifted through until you landed on freedom, travel would definitely appear in the list of words beside it. Well then, I guess it would be important to see what the definition for freedom would be in Ryan Rafferty's Unabriged 1st Edition English Dictionary.
What does freedom mean? Well, in the words of my singing-song writing friend Thomas Kivi, "freedom to me is just a word." I would agree with his statement, that words are only constructions of our own thought process, and in reality contain no true meaning. However the specific meaning I attach to a word, such as freedom, is significant, at least to me (and maybe this blog??). In the Oxford American Dictionary, freedom's definition is: the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint. I would say this is a pretty solid definition, but it does have its complications. To what degree can we be unhindered or unrestrained? We can never completely act without the hindrance or restraint of some of the physical limitations that are beyond our control. I mean, I can't just go speak fluent Mandarin because I feel the desire to do so, I would obviously hit some linguistic obstacles along the way. And I most definitely could not just fly to the moon to fulfill a sudden impulse; gravity most likely would impede this desire. I am not even able to bring a 300ml bottle of Coppertone Sunscreen through Chicago O'Hare's Airport Security (sunscreen which is now most likely being used by the TSA manager of Terminal 3 of O'Hare International's Security Check-in on his weekend vacation to visit his retired mother in Ft. Lauderale, Florida. The same TSA manager who is currently basking in the balmy floridian sun laughing about how he stole the sunscreen shielding his skin from some poor worthless college graduate traveling in Guatemala that will probably suffer from extreme melanoma sometime in the near future).
Anyway, the point of this rambling, long-winded assertion is that freedom is only something one can find within oneself, or within one's own perception of reality. Therefore exterior limitations are insignificant when one can find freedom within oneself. An example that comes to mind here is the buddhist monk who found complete liberation while imprisoned in a 5x8 cell being beaten and tortured. This exemplifies that freedom is not only absolutely subjective, but also, it is experienced individually (although we can experience freedom collectively, it is still only through our own perspective). When one can truly search their soul, they are able to find truth, identity, and thus, personal freedom. This is not to say, I would not be capable of doing this anywhere, just as the Buddhist monk, but that I can find this inner freedom much more easily while in moments of solitude. To be free of the quotidian grind and reflect on it from another angle is something quintessential to my existence. To take a new perspective on the world, with new eyes, like being born again, provides a very refreshing view of reality, and thus truth. The world never ceases to amaze me, and when I travel, I continue to wonder and search, as if returning to a youth where I must learn the world all over again.
This quote by Jostein Gaarder I think is a good way to end this blog: Sadly it is not only the force of gravity we get used to as we grow up. The world itself becomes a habit in no time at all. It seems as if in the process of growing up we lose the ability to wonder about the world. And in doing so, we lose something central--something philosophers try to restore. For somewhere inside ourselves, something we once experienced, long before we learned to think the thought.
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