Prologue
Travel is not all about forcing us to face the parts of ourselves we've been avoiding - there is great beauty too in the world, and it is our job to go out and find it
I’d just like to categorically state that not everything in life is a trauma response.
Nor is all that resides in your unconscious darkness, awaiting an opportunity to ambush you and heap more needless challenges and strife onto your life when you least expect it. When I talk about making the unconscious conscious it is not always something that is going to ruin your life – upsetting the apple cart and forcing you to scramble about on all fours looking to put the pieces back together – it could equally be the thing that makes it entirely better, that thing you were searching for all along but just were never quite sure what it was.
Nor is remaining unconscious going to make you miserable – in fact, many people live perfectly happy lives without ever stopping to think for a second about what they’re doing. Perhaps they are the happiest of all. And sometimes though not all, they are the least inclined to leave their happy homes because of a burning need to search for something beyond themselves.
But for those inclined to moments of reflection, who do decide to take their lives into their own hands, and undertake some sort of literal or spiritual adventure in search of something greater – why do they do anything at all?
It is not simply to avoid suffering (although sometimes it can be the most vital of triggers for a quest).
If you are slouched in bed all morning, perhaps drinking coffee and writing and idling, or as in many cases: wishing you could remain in bed forever, or simply at a loss as to which thing to do first in your day, your body will let you know when – or if – you need to adjust, and it is up to you to pay heed. You are free to continue slouching of course, and it may be fine, though eventually you may succumb to acute stiffness and pain, which may become chronic if you don’t course correct as your body suggests.
Numbness, too, could become an issue.
And your spirit gives you such hints too, though they’re harder to discern, and much trial-and-error attends with learning how to pay attention to it.
But I digress, again, as I’m not just here to warn you all again of the dangers of avoiding yourself.
The fact is: something will get you out of bed other than avoidance of the pain or numbness.
We live, first and foremost, because we want to.
What a revolutionary idea that is in this day and age – we are born to live!
And so too we travel and go on great adventures, not just because we have things to run away from at home, issues to avoid, demons to face on the road or dragons to slay at the climax of a great quest, but because there are glorious and beautiful things awaiting in the world, and it is our duty as humans to go find them.
If we shirk the challenge, we may as well live as animals – they are at least honest about their desires and motivations, and they are much happier too.
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I’ve written before about how our motivations are not always our own.
So what? Nobody is born free. Well, maybe they are, but they certainly aren’t allowed to grow up free. Few are allowed to pass through life without being thrown into the sausage grinder with the influence of their culture, their community, their family and the arbitrary assignment of their native land, subject to all its economic, geographic and meteorological whims.
By the time we are deemed fit to choose where we want to go ourselves, we are barely ourselves at all.
Your ego is not your enemy – it could be the only true friend you have left at this stage – and even egotistical desires can sometimes be a good motivation for doing something. In fact, in the beginning, you will probably have no other choice than to follow its direction, until you have trialled enough and erred enough to get a firmer grasp on the direction that only you can go in life.
The question is: what is it?
Life cannot be simply one long attempt to avoid disaster, and it is not. I refuse to believe we were put here to dodge bullets for long enough until we inevitably succumb to one.
We are drawn towards things that strike us as beautiful, and moreso than life is the avoidance of pain, life is also the quest for beautiful things.
I’ve hinted at and even demonstrated some of hazards of not ‘going travelling’. Travel, that is, as a metaphysical tool for self-discovery that we can all partake in on some level. In fact, travel is a fundamental aspect of life from the most basic of movements upwards, as exploration is indeed an intrinsic part of life for everyone; travel is not a misguided pursuit, and it is certainly not elitist in all its forms.
Though the title of this blog/newsletter/ongoing integration of uncovered parts my own soul that is slowly converging towards a whole greater than the sum of its parts, is somewhat facetious – partly because I’ve never really been anywhere truly dangerous, like a warzone, or a dangerous migrant crossing, or an expedition to a hostile natural environment beyond the scope of civilisation – and partly because I quite enjoy travel.
There is great beauty everywhere you look and everywhere you could possibly travel, and although I’d advise to reflect now on then on why you choose to do the things you do, and go the places you go, it is part of the fun of life that when you get a good or a bad idea into your head, you get to run with it, to run towards it, with every last ounce of your energy and enthusiasm, regardless sometimes of the consequences. If you live, you learn, and we don’t really know good ideas from bad in advance, or to put it another way, we don’t really know that which is good for us.
The world of ideas is not the forte of the mind, but the spirit, and the only way to understand them and get closer to your ideas is to go out and go towards them.
And it is the spirit of adventure which takes us towards them.
Travel is not just an escape from suffering, or a trial of the soul, but it is also the pursuit of something beautiful, things that are so beautiful sometimes that only your soul can recognise them.
If you see something or somewhere shiny on your phone, or see a great big queue of people lining up to see something they’ve been told is a ‘must see’ – a real bucket-list item that they can’t afford to miss – and think “Me too!”, or “I’ve always wanted to see that” – then go for it.
You’ll get closer and closer to what your heart knows it wants by going after that which you’re drawn to.
You’ve no other choices, really.
And if there’s a hole burning in your heart to go see or do something, and you find yourself possessed by a restlessness that won’t sleep until you get up and go there, then go for it.
The ego might be drawing us towards things that even it doesn’t understand. Even my writing this piece (whilst laying in bed all morning, writing and drinking coffee): you might conclude more from it than I ever intended.
For better, or worse.
But still, it must be done.
The alternative would be far worse.
“Discovery is the nature of the soul. There is some wildness of divinity in us, calling us to live everything.” - John O’Donohue
It’s only in chasing the things that call you, those things that sing to you as being beautiful – for whatever reason – that you are ever truly free.
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