Time seem to past faster and faster each year. I've taken a second group of student on a trip during spring break, this time to Spain. It marked the last and final time I will be working with EF tours. While others have envied my free trips abroad, each time I attend these excursions I become less and less enamored, even if I was visiting different places. The endless tourist traps and cliche photo opps all blur and become the same.
One thing I did notice, is that regardless how much people claim to be city folks and how much they enjoy the luxury, everyone have always found the excursions to a less touristy and less well known place, to be the highlight of their trip. Namely Toledo, Spain and Assisi, Italy. As for me and all my European travels, my most memorable moments of the 21 day trip was left on the mountains of Austria, between the alpine slide and the 2 mile hike to the top of mount Gole.
Phaedon once said to me that traveling makes more friends, but less deeper friendships. At the time, I said to him with confidence and a shrug of my shoulder, "who cares". As I look back at all the people I have met on all my trips, the ones I kept in touch and the ones I wish I had known better but never did, I am left to wonder, "do I care?". I'm not sure I can answer that question with such confidence now.
Ever since I have finished my novel, I grew more and more verse at disconnecting with people, that it shocks even me. I am surprise how easily I can feel a strong connections to places and people in the moment and completely lose them the next second without nostalgia or a yearning to reclaim my loss. It is as if the loss itself is not of my own and the experience is seen through the lens of someone else, and only for a fleeting moment. To quote what new generation would have say, I am able to not "catch them feelings". My thing is, this social response has become automatic. I disassociate with people and things as quickly as I connect with them, I never turn it off, and I never linger. Perhaps, even in the new age of digital connection the old adage that Phaedon quoted still have its values. Or more likely, I'm just shutting people out to avoid them from disappointing me.
Recently, I just finished Outdoor Ed for WOMS. This marked the 6th consecutive year I have participated in ODE program ever since I started being a counselor for MCPS. Even though, we are only 15 minutes away from home and 5 minutes away from civilization (okay 1 min away), it still constitutes as traveling. And in each travel with a group, we create a self sustaining eco system. The longer the travel the stronger the eco system. People depend on each other, people that seldom hangout or perhaps will never hang out, learn to become friends and enjoy each others company.
Perhaps the most gratifying moment for me in any travel, is when social barriers are erased. Age, Race, Gender, Religion, and all that divide us seem to lessen its relevance (for most of us anyways, there is always someone who is rigid and nonconforming). This magic that surface with each travel is the most powerful feeling that I have ever since known. It is truly as Mark Twain wrote, "
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness".
Yet, after each trip, there are always plans to hang out afterwards. The 21 day trip to Europe 3 years ago, with students that we swore would catch up, we never did. The 5 students I went to Italy 2 years ago with, that we agree that we would catch a bite to eat sometime we never did. The trip this past year, I promise that I would meet their parents for Happy Hour, to discuss the trip. I never did, nor did they follow through. It is not for a lack of trying or a lack of sincerity, but as always when we return to our lives, we go back to the conundrum of the rat race. All the social barriers return to us. Race, Religion, Gender, Age, and perhaps ever more relevant for most people, is our social circle (that we don't change. The magic of the travel ends, and lives return to as we have left it.
The longer the trip, the longer the nostalgia, and we hang on to the feeling a little longer. But, so much of our lives is driven by media and social conditioning. I have spent the better part of my life in the last three years, learning and fighting these social conditioning. It has made me very frustrated at how easily people are influence and brainwashed by media. Our perception of what is cool and what is good is high dependent on what is available via media for us to consume.
We are conditioned to believe what is fun. One of the main reason why everyone is going to clubs, getting drunk, or getting high. We are condition to believe what is consider moral by a skewed social standard. Which determines what we can enjoy and what we can not at any given age or gender or race. We digest one bad tv show and movie one after another, no matter how bad it is, as long as they are selling sex appeal white women and white men. We consume these as if we are junkies looking for our next fix, we be are program to believe that white people are the baseline for beauty and masculinity. That being American, or rather White American is the standard we must live up to. This mentality is beyond just our own conditioning, but a conditioning that allows others to be racist and for us to accept those racism as a cultural norm.
My last serious relationship was 3 years ago with an Ecuadorian girl. That relationship lasted 4 years. Long story short, she cheated on me with someone at work. I kicked her out the next day or rather I suspected, and just packed all her stuff. I call her to come by and loaded her car and told her I was done. Since that day, she has religiously contacted me every couple month. Making up silly excuses to email me about nonsense.
Two years later that repetition became more frequent to weekly. I agree to meet with her, to hear her out. To my surprise, she wanted me back in her life, while she kept the other guy she cheated on me with, in her life as well. She was not only matter of fact about the fact that she can have her cake and eat it too, but unapologetic with this unbelievably entitlement and arrogant logic. She asked me if I was "happy", clearly she wasn't. I never answered her, but honestly, I'm pretty happy without someone stressing me. After more conversation of her trying to blame things on me instead of taking any responsibility for her action, I told her to never talk to me again. Of course, that only means she contacted me again several month later. I finally wrote her a really long winded reason why I don't even want to talk to her ever again, that she couldn't even apologize for hurting me is a sign that I had no interest to even keeping her around as a friend. Naturally, I got an apology after I asked for it, which would have meant everything if she said it herself, but alas it meant nothing to me with my prompting. Several month later she contacted me again. I ignored it, but it bothered me so much that I would receive something again, that I contacted her myself, telling her not to contact me unless she has something legitimate to say to me. I finally stop hearing from her. Fingers crossed.
This idea, that people can have their cake and eat it too, is the product of social justice media double talk that has ruin so many peoples lives. A person who gets everything on the back of others has nothing because the things they have have no meaning. The value of what you have becomes meaningless if you did not give up something else to get what you really want. Choices, it is what makes us regret and despair for the wrong decision, and what ultimately makes us happy and content when we make the right ones.
When you can have everything at the expense of others, it may seem like you are omnipotent and a facade of control and false confidence will inspire you to take on politically correct rallies and social justice movements. But the fairy tale world of having it all is a solipsistic one. This solipsistic world will consistently collide with the real world, as your beauty fades, and less people are there to support this delusion of a life style. For most people this realization does not often come too late, but when it does comes it is often met with denial. More often than not, when they finally decide to accept the reality, it is indeed too late.
I started testing my gear memorial day weekend, this was at the Pine Barrens in NJ.
In a year from now, I'm embarking on my trip to circumnavigate the America's (north and south) on my motorcycle for a year. I am terrified of letting go a very plush paying job, wonderful coworkers, and a pretty high standard of living being a bachelor with no debts and all. Each day, as I prep the gears, and test out my bikes for the trip, I am full of doubt, full of fear. I don't know if I will regret going and letting go what I have, it is a revelation that will comes long after my trip has been over. I do know two things that are for certain, I will regret not going when I look back at my life at this opportunity not taken. I also known for certain, that when I'm on the road, it is the only time I truly feel my love for life rekindled and my faith in humanity restored.