Epilogue

Where do you end up when you've nowhere left to go?

Image by Max Yakovlev from Pixabay

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“Back to the real world, eh!”

Oh, they love saying that one, don’t they?

What goes up must come down, and what goes away must come home.

All good journeys must come to an end, and though the unreal world we inhabit on our travels – the bridge between the physical world and the ones of our dreams – exists every bit as much as this one, the so-called Real World is the only one in which we can go on living, for now.

When all’s said and done – where does this all leave you now?

What did you get from your trip?

Oh, I know there are many who like to travel just to experience it all for its own sake. A holiday or a movie – it’s all just casual entertainment, isn’t it?

Though surely you haven’t read this far and still think that’s all there is to it?

Travel is a blank canvas on which we project our own worlds.

The possibilities therein are endless, and by following a path through space it’s possible to look back and see a remarkable transformation from who we were when we left, to who we are now.

For better, or worse.

To those who are looking for it, that is – whether they know it or not.

But the road always runs out, and invariably you end up back where you started. If, that is, you don’t stay somewhere long enough to see it become Home, with all that entails.

Too often, we don’t want the adventure to end, and a sense of dread creeps up at the thought of returning home.

We might begin to lose the run ourselves as the road runs out, and the light at the end of the tunnel fills us with dread rather than hope. We are cast adrift in a sea of impending meaninglessness, and it becomes apparent that you’ve nothing to go home to but yourself.

And you end up right back where you started.

A bit happier in the short-term, though shortly after you’re itching to go again.

That’s you, isn’t it:

“Always looking for the next adventure”

You might ask yourself:

“Why was I doing all this?”

Why did you even bother?

In this particular instance, I drove the length of Vietnam for several reasons, reasons that I could think of at least:

“I wanted to go on a road trip” – the allure of a spontaneous and unplanned journey of limitless possibilities the road looming so large in the collective consciousness for so long as to most likely come from the divine.

“I wanted to see the real Vietnam”

I’d been there long enough and felt like I must see as much of it as I could while I had the opportunity, to the point of it feeling almost like an obligation. And truth be told, the chaos inherent to the country and the alienation of being so far away from home, and for all intents and purposes alone, had worn me down, to the point of harbouring many resentments towards the place, some well-founded, many not, and being somewhat conscious of this, I felt like ‘getting to know the place better’ might give me a newer, freer perspective of the place, and perhaps cultivate some sense of renewed gratitude and appreciation for it.

Maybe too, I just wanted a holiday, an escape, a break, a moment in time without purpose or intent – avital part of living too.

Maybe even too, I was ever so slightly aware that – let’s face it – it sounded cool, and would look cool, and everyone else who’d done it was cool, and I wanted to be cool too.

So many of our desires are not our own, let’s not forget, and the whole domain of travel is susceptible to status games and point-scoring, perhaps now – in the age of experiential materialism – more than ever.

But hey – whatever about all these lofty ideals, at the end of the day, a big reason – and maybe the most important reason – and one which needs no justification, is:

I thought it would be fun.

Did I achieve these goals?

Of course.

All of it and more.

It was one of the best travel experiences I’ve ever had.

Not just mere entertainment, it was transcendent, fulfilling all my dreams and more, an experience – or continuous chain of experiences, might be more accurate – that bordered on mystical at times for the manner in which it uncannily provided things I needed, but never knew of.

Why then, did I collapse over the finish line, trudging aimlessly to assorted cafes in Saigon City, smoking heavily, drinking to pass away the time, avoiding people and passing time by writing to avoid living, my body depleted and unable to maintain much further interest or attention in anything, and most of all, dreading going home?

Physical exhaustion played a part, though burnout only really comes when we are working on things we hate; the things which are taking our energy away from the things our soul craves.

The trip had delivered everything I thought I wanted from it, and more.

Though this was a long time ago, and I’ve since discovered that what we think we want is only part of the story.

Our unconscious is the thing that drives us through the world, and it’s up to our mind to figure out why, if it can ever do that at all. Our unconscious is our link to the divine, and it often needs the world to reflect back to us what it wants.

The worlds it takes us to are a mirror to our own soul, and the things it shows us are the things we can barely think of for ourselves.

It will pull us this way and that, present us with choices, and often it’s only in hindsight we can see why we truly did this or that.

“If you cannot understand why someone did something, look at the consequences – and infer the motivation”

-          C.G. Jung

We go travelling with all our reasons ‘Why’, though it’s often the ‘How’ which is more illuminating as to what we wanted.

I began the trip with a self-professed desire to ‘take the road less travelled’, and ‘go off the beaten path’, and even to ‘drive off the edge of the world’, in a sense, and with it came a simmering resentment of backpackers, tourists, noobs and any of the inauthentic or inexperienced travellers I deemed to be beneath my company.

Though along the way I couldn’t help but return to the places of convenience, of familiarity, and ultimately, connection, my path turning this way and that and reverting from untouched wilderness, to tourist spot and back again several times, my path crossing tourists both warm and friendly – and relatable – and mildly annoying, until I had to concede that, maybe there was nothing wrong with backpackers, and that perhaps finding a balance between civilisation and isolation might actually be what worked best for me.

I thought I needed to ‘get away from Hanoi’ and the suffocation of Vietnamese culture, and to ‘see the real Vietnam’ (however one could contrive that the atomic sensory overload that is Hanoi doesn’t constitute ‘real’), though I found myself falling in love with the place over and over, and with greater intensity, every day, and at some point down the line freeing myself from the cognitive dissonance that “It must be just that Hanoi’s the worst place in Vietnam”, when in fact everything I’d belatedly fallen in love with about Vietnam was present and abundant there too.

All preconceptions being stripped away, one by one/

The unconscious sends us to the places which it knows will reveal itself to us.

The trip peels away at the layers of your conscious desires until you’re left with all that remains.

In doing so, the unconscious lives or dies, all that is deadwood is burned away, leaving behind all only that which is indestructible.

Which, depending on the state of your life back Home, may or may not be much.

Despair, depression and degeneracy take hold as we are faced with returning Home with – what seems like in the moment, at least – less than we started with.

And on the road, existing in a state of semi-permanent chaos, even in a Home away from Home, the depths of the well of existence are potentially bottomless.  

Sometimes it might seem like the safer option is to never leave at all in the first place. To reject the Call to Adventure, for fear of finding out the things we’d rather not know.

Though as the big guy also said:

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

-          C.G. Jung

Although travel might be dangerous, there are fates worse than getting lost at sea.  

It might be far more dangerous to ignore that which is calling you.

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