“If you don’t believe in yourself, you’re a fucking coward.” Dan Avidan

About two months ago I moved to California.  I picked up my life, put it in a small car, and drove from Juneau, Alaska to Arcata, California.  You can’t actually drive out of Juneau, Alaska, I had to take a ferry most of the way, but I had everything in a car so it’s easier to say I drove.  Three days on a boat is no small feat, but not a bad way to go.  If you’re ever thinking of moving to Alaska, I highly recommend taking the ferry system.  There’s nothing like a cool morning on the deck of a boat cruising through the channels of northern Washington, Canada, and Alaska.

I digress.

About two months ago I landed in California and started working a job that I didn’t particularly care for. I took it to get out of Alaska, where I had been living with my father to save money.  The move would essentially function as a transition back to the real world.

Fast forward to just about two weeks ago.  I got a call from another part of the organization I work for.  Someone down in Orange County wanted to interview me for a position.  The next day, same story from a job in Seattle. I liked the idea of getting out of Arcata.  It’s a drug town with a college problem. Most of the money made and spent in Arcata came from marijuana.  I have no issue with those of you who want to partake in recreational drugs. It’s just not for me.

The issue at this point was my living space.  I had put in an application for an apartment at one of the two complexes in town.  At the time that I did this I had been set-up in an AirBNB; short-term living situation to say the least. 

So now I found myself in a race.

If I interviewed well on the new job, I might be moving to Seattle or Orange Country within a few months and have no need for an apartment in Arcata. If I sucked in the interview, I would be staying in Arcata and need an apartment. During the process, my time at the AirBNB would come to an end and I would find myself homeless. 

I thought about this a lot, too.  Would it be impossible for me to be homeless?  I know that in Japan there are thousands of people who have steady jobs, but don’t have a place to live because there just aren’t enough places to house them.  Living out of my car seemed like a struggle, but a one that I could cope with.  One I surely hoped I wouldn’t have to cope with, but if it came to it, I would deal with the situation as best I could.

That’s one thing you pick up when you spend most of your life moving from one place to another.  Not much seems insurmountable. I’ve become quiet adept at rolling with the punches and adapting to new situations.

There may seem like there should have been an easy fix to my situation.  I could just find another AirBNB, right? Well, the one that I had found turned out to be the only long-term AirBNB in the town. There are also no extended stay hotels in Arcata.  And most rooms you rent come with a six-month lease that becomes month-to-month at the end of that period. My options were sparse if I was hoping to get out of town within a few months.

Another week went by and I did very well on the interview.  At the same time, the apartment complex needed an answer about the apartment.

The dilemma arises:

Do I sign the lease to an apartment and count on myself doing poorly on the next level of the interview, or do I take a chance on me, put everything I have into the interview and count on them choosing me over all their other candidates?

I have more than a few grey hairs on my head because of this week of my life. I told the apartment to hold on for a weekend and I did the interview.  It went well and I decided that whatever happened, I would put all my faith in me.  After the weekend, I told the apartment complex that I didn’t need the apartment. I’d heard that the apartment complexes in this town are ruthless when it comes to breaking leases. And I waited. I waited two days before I got a call from the job in Seattle.

They wanted me.

This hectic week resulted in one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. Not only had I taken a huge chance on myself, but I had dropped my Plan-B.  I had put all my chips in my corner and came out on top.  There’s nothing quite like finding out that you have the ability and courage to work out all your troubles after all.  I took the job and now I’m planning a move rather than a way to stay in a place I don’t like for longer than I need. I’m planning a future rather than a way to survive today.

In a world like the one that we live in, it’s important to be independent and strong.  It’s also important to have people you can rely on.  Take my father for instance. Any time I talk to him he ends his calls by saying: “let me know if you need any help.”

Coming from anyone else, this would be great.  Coming from anyone else I would feel like someone has my back hoping I succeed and they’re there if I fail.  Coming from my father, all I hear is that he knows that I’ll need his help in the future because I’m not good enough to succeed on my own. In my world, relying on my father is giving up on myself.

I know that this may not make much sense, and you may have trouble relating to it, reader, and I honestly hope that you do.  If you see your parents as a supportive foundation upon which you can build your dreams, all the better. But I’m not like that. Not right now anyway. And that’s why, when I took that chance on me, I really took a chance on allowing my father to see me as another charity case.

I don’t want to be someone’s charity case, reader.  And I don’t want to be a ‘fucking coward.”  I believe that it takes a lot of courage to say: “I’m good enough.” I think it takes a lot of courage to put everything on the line and hold faith in yourself when no one else seems to. Asking for help is difficult and important, and I’m learning to do that more without feeling guilty, but this time, it was important that I do it on my own.  And I feel all the stronger for it. I’ve reached new limits. I’ve broadened my horizons.

Reader, I’m not encouraging you to forgo any assistance that might be offered.  But I am encouraging you to be true to yourself.  Count on yourself more than anyone else. You may not believe it, but you have a lot more to offer yourself than you think.  Sometimes it’s hard to see how everything will work out, and at times the world may seem too dark to see the light, but those are the times when it’s important to take a breath, give it your all, and count on yourself to pull through. 

I did.  Even if it seems like something that would have worked out anyway, I felt pretty desperate and I felt like giving up more than a few times.  But I didn’t. I held on longer than I thought I could. And now I’m not sure anything is impossible.

“And indeed there will be time

To wonder, ‘Do I dare?’ and, ‘Do I dare?’

Time to turn back and descend the stair,

With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —

(They will say: ‘How his hair is growing thin!’)

My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,

My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —

(They will say: ‘But how his arms and legs are thin!’)

Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse…

Shall I part my hair behind?   Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.”

–

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

T.S. Eliot

When I was born, I technically did disturb the universe.  I couldn’t help it.  I don’t remember putting in the effort, and I don’t remember much of anything beyond that point for a good five-years, but I did disturb the universe.  I am to blame for that.

Is that right, though?

Should I have made such an impression, and how much more of an impression am I allowed to have?

While driving on the highway you will notice me.  I am the one going the speed limit, taking his time on curvy roads, avoiding cyclists with a wide birth, and allowing others to pass me without much hesitation or grumbling.  That being said, I do hold up some eager drivers out there.  On two lane roads, when I am given just the right amount of space for my care and no one else’s, I do tend to block some people’s progression on the road as they try to urge me into going beyond the set speed limit. I impede those who want to go faster.  Not because I am making an effort to slow them down, but by merely following the rules of the road, I am now disturbing their universe.

Am I allowed to do that?  Am I allowed to put my goals above everyone else’s goals?  Can I go at my own speed even if it slows or speeds others up?  And if I am allowed, do I dare?

At times I find myself under a lot of pressure to behave in a manner imposed upon me by others.  They are imposing their own beliefs onto me, disturbing my universe.  If this is right or wrong, it doesn’t matter.  They are disturbing my universe.

“Do I dare to eat a peach?”

Whose peach am I taking away?  Who is not getting to eat that peach because I ate it. Who am I saving from that peach?  If the pit were rotten and worm infested, am I taking away the pain of biting into that peach from someone more or less fortunate than myself.  In that moment, I would be more less fortunate than them because of my actions.  I am disturbing their universe, but I am taking away pain that they would otherwise be enduring, and they no longer ever have to experience the pain that that peach would have brought them.  But the joy of biting into that perfect peach, if that be the case, is never going to be theirs either.  In either case, I am disturbing their universe. For better or worse I am changing the way they experience the world, and I am the one to blame regardless of the outcome.

Am I allowed to do that?

What are the consequences if I eat a peach, if I disturb someone’s universe?  What consequences will befall me, and only me, if I disturb the universe around me?  Not just someone else’s universe, but the universe in its entirety?

I’m not sure. Because I have only ever experienced these consequences and do not know the world in which the consequences do not exist.  Because I exist, I have only ever experienced a world in which the consequences of my existence have been played out. And every time with no other world to compare them to.

In the episode of Futurama entitled “The Farnsworth Parabox” we find our heroes transported, through a cardboard box, into a world in which all coin flips from their universe came out the opposite way.  This means that every time they, any of them, flipped a coin that resulted in heads in their universe, in turn resulted in tails in this other universe.  Let’s call them ‘Universe A’ and ‘The Fighting Mongooses’.  In Universe A, Fry and Leela were not married, Bender had a Fog Hat Grey finish, and the Professor did not have a stylish head wound. In The Fighting Mongooses, Fry and Leela were married, Bender had a gold finish, and the Professor had a stylish head wound. All of this because of the reversed outcomes of parallel coin flips.

Now, this is an imagination of what could happen regarding views of alternate universes and the decisions we make and how those decisions we make effect the world around us, and the universe beyond that. There are theories out there that outlay possibilities of existing parallel universes, my favorite being The Mandela Effect.  In a quick summary that does not do the Effect justice, The Mandela Effect is a theory that proposes the idea that people come from different universes, and, at some point in their lives, come over to the universe we currently all reside within. Those people hold memories from their childhood from the other universe, but otherwise do not realize that anything else is different. For instance, The Berenstain Bears in their universe being called The Bernstein Bears.

I’m not going as far as proposing the idea, or even supporting the idea, that I come from another universe, or even that you do, reader.  In fact, I’m saying quite the opposite.  I come from the same universe you do, and in that we now belong to the same construct, the universe. We’re not given the opportunity to view a world in which we don’t exist, and as far as we know, that universe doesn’t exist.

How much of your action and how much of my action are we allowed to impose upon one another?  How much can I do, how much am I allowed to do, before I’ve completely altered your actions?  And is that too much?  Am I, as a fellow being in this universe allowed to fully alter another human being’s experience in this universe?  And by writing this, haven’t I already altered too much?

My goal as a writer, the reason behind me wanting to become a full-fledged published author, has always been to inspire people the way my favorite authors have inspired me.  I would like to influence others to enjoy reading, to live with imagination, to have dreams and the ability to envision those dreams being conquered and achieved. It’s impossible to achieve my dream unless I influence other people.  It’s impossible for me to achieve my dream without disturbing the universe. I didn’t make the rules, but I abide by them.  I occupy my space, I occupy the same space as everyone else in this universe, and that, by pure and simple logic, means that I will disturb the universe and I am allowed to do just that.  Just as much as anyone else.  Just as much as you are entitled to disturb the universe you exist within, reader.

You have the responsibility of eating that peach.

In my life I have been in love twice. Both times I became so obsessed with the girl that when they eventually broke my heart, it hurt for months, maybe even years afterward. It’s a present sort of pain, the kind that persists without peaks or valleys.

There’s a man out there, a comedian or a profit.  It’s hard to tell the difference these days. This man tells a story during his act. He talks about a girl who broke his heart and hurt him so badly that he could not love again for a long time. Yet, when pressed to think about it, he says that if he were to see her on the street and see her begging for food or shelter, he would stop and he would help her. Because he loves her.  Not loved. Loves. That’s the important message of his story. He never stopped caring for her, even after he felt that she stopped caring for him.

I have noticed that concept is a foreign one in today’s society.  Too many times I have seen two people fall in love, then break-up and never talk to each other again.  One day they are completely in love, the next day they couldn’t care less if the other person got hit by a bus.

I’m not sure how this line of thinking came along, but I would be lying if I said I never became persuaded to a similar line of thinking. After college I left the town that I had lived in for over five-years.  On my way out of town I decided that if I were to keep friends I should make sure they were meaningful ones.  I ended up cutting a lot of people out of my life, in real vindictive ways, too.  Years later, I realized that the only thing that I gained from doing that was loneliness. Seems simple enough when you think about it.  Guy cuts people out of his life, guy realizes he lost friends.

Well, honestly, I didn’t think about it at the time.  I was so focused on leaving, starting my new life, getting new loves and new friends, that I didn’t realize what I was giving up until it was gone.  Cue every song on the radio ever.

It took an episode of Doctor Who to offer me an epiphany.  Now, I have had strikingly few epiphanies in this life (I’m still young, so don’t worry, there will most likely be more), but this one is by far the biggest.

The episode in question showed a companion of The Doctor betray his trust and then expect vengeance to be her reward.  Instead of vengeance, he offers her kindness. He says: “You think I care for you so little that betraying me would make a difference?”

This blew my mind.  For the first time I had seen an instance of a character finding someone who had wounded them, who put significant effort into wounding them, and the character responds with not only kindness, but acceptance.  He accepts this companion for who she is, even the part of her that betrayed him.

‘Betrayed’ here is such a huge word.  When the girlfriend I had in college told me she wanted to break-up I felt betrayed.  When the girlfriend I had some years after that told me she wasn’t really feeling the relationship, I felt betrayed.  It’s a huge concept. Betrayal. It’s something you can’t do to just anyone on the street.  It requires the gaining of someone’s trust, then turning that trust against them completely.

The difference was my response to these girls. I say girls here because in my mind they are both a bit immature.  Not in a way that I’m trying to lash out at them through the internet, but in a way that I understand that they have some growing up to do.  I’m fine referring to myself as ‘boy’ in the same connotation.

The way I responded to girl number one was the way I had been trained by popular belief of friends, social media, and basic advice off the internet. Remember, this break-up was tough and I searched long and hard for a balm to my emotional burn.  As a result of my exhaustive searching, I told her that she wouldn’t hear from me again and now I have no idea where she is in life and I feel about as good as one can after cutting someone who once meant a great deal to them out of their life.

Girl number two I treated a little differently. Please understand, these relationships were several years apart, as I’ve said, and I feel as though there were a few life lessons learned in between.  Particularly from a certain Doctor.

When girl number two broke-up with me, I told her I understood and I want her to be happy.  And I didn’t hear anything. For months. Then I sent her an e-mail.  Told her I missed talking to her and I recognize how easy it is to cut important people from your life, told her that I didn’t want to make the mistake of pushing her away from me, despite the horrid feelings that come after someone says you’re not good enough for them to love.  I told her that despite everything, she could find me if she needed me.

And I felt better.  At least, better than I did after the way I handled girl number one. I feel as though I can uphold that comedian-profit man’s lesson.  And maybe I won’t have to wait until she’s lost everything in life to prove to her that I can still be there.  Maybe I can prove to myself that I am allowed to care for people who have hurt me, and the only response to pain isn’t more pain.

I know that some religions preach this about friends or family, but for me starting a family, meeting that right person, and falling madly in love has always been at the top of my list.  So when the pain hit so close to home, so did the lesson. And I realize now that if I care about someone, it shouldn’t matter if they betray me, I can still feel the way I do about them. I can offer them food and shelter and anything else. 

Have you ever heard of the Trickle Down Theory?  In case you haven’t, it’s a theory that came about in Hoover’s day to help deal with the Great Depression.  What it attempted to provide was relief for the poor by giving more money to the rich.  In theory, the rich would then spend more money, and the money would trickle down the economic system of America to the point where more money would be flowing from the pockets of the rich and into the pockets of the poor. It didn’t work.  The rich kept the extra money and the poor got poorer and The Great Depression went on.

Anyway, this idea I’m talking about is like that. Only it seems to work a little bit better.  Because finding a partner, getting married, having a family and what not is so high up in my list of To Do’s, everything under that on the list gets a bit of the lessons benefits.  For example, I learn that betrayal is just a word and I don’t have to take it to heart when a loved one breaks said heart, now I’m not only placing more understanding throughout my romantic relationships, but my relationships with my family, my friendships, work colleagues, people I meet from the bar, people I talk to on the street and so on.

Sure, I may have a damaged heart at the moment, but I’m not letting that get in the way of being the good person that I want to be. I can hurt and still help people heal, and so can you, reader.

When I was a kid I had terrible taste in video games. And thank God I did because otherwise I would have fallen into a niche or relied on other people to tell me what to like.  As most ten-year-olds did, I had my impressionable qualities and I did adopt certain interests from my older brothers and my friends at the time.  But, that’s not to say I didn’t develop my own ideas of what was good. And it was those ideas that stuck around well into my twenties.

I just threw a pretty vague idea at you.  Sorry about that, reader, but don’t run away screaming just yet, I’m about to make this a lot clearer.

Nostalgia is a huge part of who we are, a huge part of who I am.  Things that I liked in the past are now defining characteristics of who I am today. Take for instance Banjo-Kazooie. This game is the first game that I remember playing, and it’s often the game my dad refers back to when we talk about my childhood.  For hours we would sit together and I would play and he would joke about never getting a turn.  I don’t remember beating the final boss or collecting all of the Jiggies, but I do remember the sense of adventure that came with the game. Ah, now we’re in familiar territory.  If you’ve read anything else on my blog, you might have realized that this kid talks about adventure and discovery a lot. It’s true.

Now, when I say I had terrible taste in video games when I was a kid, I don’t mean that Banjo-Kazooie was a bad game, I just mean that it wasn’t the popular choice in my neighborhood.  The taste I had in games didn’t fit those around me, and I didn’t realize that that wasn’t such a bad thing at the time, so I assumed that I just had bad taste. However, that fact only made me like the game all the more. I liked being the only one on the adventure or, even better, I loved being able to share the experience with only my dad.

Today it is so easy to find and play a game from our childhood. Even buying a current game is so much easier when you consider digital downloads, the abundance of stores that specialize in video games, and shopping online, but when I was ten things were a bit more complicated.  If you wanted to play a game, you had to work for it. Every so often I would come across money for a game which at $50 had been an astronomical amount for me to just come across.  I would usually find myself waiting for Christmas or a birthday to come around so I could buy the game I had been pining over for months. It hurt, a deep emotional hurt, to have to wait for the game to hit the shelves, then wait again for the time I could afford it or ask for it. That’s a lot of strain on a small child’s emotions.

Then, when that moment came, when I finally set out on that journey up to the peak of Spiral Mountain, the sense of adventure took over. I didn’t see a set of pixels on a screen, I didn’t hear recordings of music played back through the crappy speakers on our convex television. No, I felt the grass between my toes, I salivated at taste honeycombs, I could smell the belches coming from Captain Blubber.  And the music, let’s just say, if my mind falls into that vacant sort of drift off mode we all fall into from time to time, then I often find myself humming Grant Kirkope’s Spiral Mountain theme.

While my brother’s played WWC wrestling or Halo or Half-Life, which don’t get me wrong are all great games, I would wait and wait for my turn on the television so that I could slap in my copy of Donkey Kong 64 or Banjo-Kazooie and explore and discover and get lost in an adventure all my own.  I’m not trying to build bridges where there aren’t any, but I could definitely make a solid attempt at blaming my drive to see new places and meet new people on the games that entertained me as a child.  For me, the idea that there might be my own Spiral Mountain hiding in the woods in Oregon or a Donkey Kong Island off the coast of Florida gives me such pleasure. And the fact that those things might be there and I might be missing out on them, that kills me.

I have a recent example of this.

When I was eleven or twelve I picked up Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets. I’d just come back from watching Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone in the theater and I craved more of the wizarding world.  Thus started my obsession with The Boy Who Lived. That’s right Potterheads, I started with book 2.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, this would later be my drive to take a solo trip to London in my mid-twenties.  The first time I am able to go out on my own, cross an ocean and make the world a smaller place for myself, and I choose a place that has deep roots in my childhood.  Now, I knew that London would have some connection to Harry Potter when I bought the tickets, I even knew that there were tours around the city to take people to sites specifically related to the stories.  The fact that I knew all this was over-shadowed, though. While I planned the trip I had fooled myself into thinking that I had picked London for much more logical reasons:  They spoke the language, the currency was relatively easy to understand, the people don’t hate Americans and the food would be close to what I thought food should be.  This was to be the first step out into the world, nothing more than a gateway to more adventures.  I wanted to take it easy, slide into the pool inch by inch rather than dive into the deep-end.

So that’s what I told myself. And maybe I didn’t know it at the time of planning the trip, but I figured it out really quick when I set foot in King’s Cross Station for the first time. When I caught site of the platforms and the trains and the people I knew right then that I had come all this way just to get closer to what I loved since I was a child, and closer to my childhood self. And all I can tell you now is that I don’t regret a moment of it.  I don’t regret the money I spent on the plane ticket, and I don’t regret letting my ticket to Matilda the Musical go to waste so I could get last minute tickets to The Cursed Child Part one and two.

I’ll tell you one thing, reader.  Feeding my nostalgia with trips to far off destinations felt good and it helped me accomplish something that I never thought I would need to accomplish.  It made me feel valid. Those adventures I went on with Banjo and Harry as a kid through books and in games made me feel great, but because my older brother’s didn’t like them or some of the people I hung around with laughed at me or at the idea of a talking bear or a boy wizard, that feeling seemed to be paired with another feeling: Ignorance.  I felt ignorant of the world. I felt that other people understood the way things worked better than I did.  I began to think that the adventures I believed in were childish and immature and that I would eventually have to grow out of them.

Feeding my nostalgia by exploring the grass fields over a small mountain, ducking into a cave on the side of a valley or walking down the streets of London, that took all those negative feelings away.  I realized again what I had seen as a child. I saw the adventure.

The truth is, I had lost something in the years that passed since first playing Banjo-Kazooie or seeing Daniel Radcliffe pick up the wand in Ollivander’s.  I had lost the feeling of exploration and excitement of setting out on a journey.  It slipped away somewhere during high school and got buried by an adult job.  Well, I’m happy to say that I’ve found it again.  I found the adventure when I followed the steps of Harry and I’m sure that if I ever find my own Spiral Mountain I’ll sit back and let the music flow through me completely at peace and ready for anything.

“So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservation, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality, nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit.”

• Christopher McCandless

“All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.”

• JRR Tolkien

At this point in my series on Wonder and Wander I’ve reached some conclusions about drifting off into the world with a sense of acceptance and understanding and getting lost in new concepts and ideas and religions and loves.

I know you didn’t expect to reach part four, reader, and find a sum-it-up conclusion of the first three parts. Sorry about that. But it’s over now, and we can move on.

Let’s start with the first idea I bring up in the quote above. Back when I read Into The Wild I felt that the author spent a lot of time idolizing a young man who chose to abandon his life and find a new one with fewer constrictions. The author, Jon Krakauer, envied the spirit of McCandless and his call to adventure. Krakauer tried to force a number of ties between himself and his subject and those ties are what he expanded on through the book.  I picked the book up to read about McCandless, himself, and instead found a kind of love letter.  In truth, I could relate more to the author of this book than the subject. I felt that same envy toward McCandless and his daring escape from our society. I wanted to wander off into the wild and leave this secure life behind. The only problem was I really didn’t care what kind of adventure Krakauer had gone off on or the type of life-risking adventuring he’d committed to. 

In all actuality I would never abandon my home, my family, my doctors and bank account. I feel safe and secure with those things, just as McCandless tells me I do.  This criticism of my life makes me feel naïve, or like I don’t really know what to do so I just do what everyone else is doing.  I conform.  Everyone else feels safe with a job and a car, so I do, too. And I’m sure that this is damaging to my adventurous spirit. But I’m not as big of a risk-taker as Krakauer.

That being said, the best way that I have found to replenish my adventurous spirit is to lose myself in my surroundings. That’s much easier, and safer. And this is what I want to share with you, reader.  Sometimes, when life is busy and hard and noisy, it’s refreshing to wander off and get lost.  What I mean here is, I try to go without a map.

Take for instance my trip to San Diego this past May. I found a nice little place to stay near the Gaslamp district, close to a main road, and within earshot of the ocean.  This, for me, was a great way to get lost.  We had landmarks, general sense of direction and if need be, we could ask for directions. 

Ah, right there, another perk of traveling without a map.  You meet so many great people when you ask for directions.  The best thing about asking for directions is it’s a great way to break the ice.  I met a terrific woman on this trip by asking her about the San Diego Zoo.

I know what you’re thinking: Getting lost near the main road isn’t really getting lost. Well, stick with me for a moment and we’ll get beyond that thought together.

On our second morning of this trip, my friend and I wandered off in the general direction of downtown in hopes of finding breakfast.  After about forty minutes we wound up in a busy area and hopelessly lost.  Before I could start looking for a landmark or a street sign or grab at anything that would help us get our bearings, my friend had her phone out and started typing away, Googling the location of the restaurant in relation to her GPS on her phone.

This frustrated me. Here I was, an explorer in a new world, and someone was trying to give me a path to follow, a set of goals to achieve, a crayon to color inside the lines with. This frustrated me because I have for a long time now firmly believed that the journey is the point, not the destination.  Cliché, I know. But it’s so true.

At the time I was trying to be nice, and I told her to give me five more minutes before we resort to looking it up. And I found the place.  In those five minutes I actually found the exact restaurant that we had been searching for. And that, that was the greatest sense of accomplishment. We got lost, we used our wits, we didn’t succumb to the evil that is the map of someone else’s journey, and we reached our destination alive!  And the sense of accomplishment overwhelmed me and I truly believe that the breakfast we ate that morning was all the better for it.

Let’s touch on Tolkien here.  The reason I picked the quote above was mainly for the second line, “Not all those who wander are lost”, but then I read the rest of the poem and found sense in the lines around the one I needed.  I do believe that Tolkien had a great sense of adventure.  I mean, you kind’ve have to if you’re going to write Lord of The Rings. What I believe this excerpt from his poem that gains its title from the first line means is that nothing is truly as it appears.

At first glance, the streets of San Diego seem to be a puzzling spatter of lines on a page, but when you get to them, you really find the adventure they offer.  The smells, the tastes, the accents and stories. And the same went for the streets of London when I visited there, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Madrid, Juneau, Dallas, the list goes on and on. 

Speaking of Dallas. When I lived there I dated a girl who used her car’s GPS everywhere she went. She’d been there for nearly her entire life, going on twenty-seven years.  The thing of it is, when she turned the GPS off, which rarely happened, she’d become lost. I spent just over a year in that city and by the end of it I knew the streets better than she ever had, ever would probably. 

At first glance, a map seems like a godsend, something to save us from hurtling off into the night and never being heard from again.  Upon closer inspection, the map, the GPS, the phones that tell us to “make the next legal U-turn” have only a crippling effect.  In this technologically evolved age we are dependent on machines and satellites to tell us where to go and how to go there. We are being drained of our sense of adventure.  I’m being drained of my sense of adventure.  It’s in our roots, our heritage and our generations of experience we gain through family stories, to travel. We have found our way over continents and oceans, through countless storms and beyond too many horizons to just give up now.  It’s the deep roots that are not reached by the frost.  Well, I believe that the frost is coming, and we need to find our roots before they’re lost for good.  Because it’s through these roots that we gain our strength and without them, we’re going to wither.

When I am old, I want to be able to tell my family that I lived a good life and I got lost a whole lot, but I always found my way home.  I want to tell them of the dragons and goblins I fought, I want to tell them about the princesses that I met and the orcs that tried to steal them away from me. I want adventure in my life, reader, and I want that for you, too.

I’ll be the first to admit that I am no Chris McCandless.  Although, I did spend a year in Alaska, and I do tend to wander off from time to time.  I promise, reader, this is not a love letter.

The reason I started this four-part series on Wander and Wonder was because it’s an important subject to me. I love to encourage people to think for themselves, live outside the guidebook of life, take on challenges that might help them grow. That’s why I have written so extensively trying to encourage you to walk around, get lost, meet some new people, get lost with them.  Try new things whenever you can. Eat food that’s against your religion, fight for what you believe rather than what you’re told to believe. It’s your life, not anyone else’s and no one should tell you how you should be doing it. You always have a choice and you always have the option. Try not to get fooled into believing you are stuck in your unhappy circumstances. But it is up to you.  Take the initiative, because I can’t do it for you.

That’s about it, I guess. I want to thank you for reading. You’re really fantastic to make it all the way through my theories and ideas, and I hope you found some encouragement in my words.

Until next time, reader.

You have to be happy that you had the chance to know her. It’s an odd feeling.  Never again will you be able to say her name to her the way you used to and see her eyes light up.  There’s no hope in that ever happening again.  Ever.  Your memories are cold now, too.  The once warm touch of her palm on your chest or her cheek on your cheek, that’s a long time ago.  That’s something that has been sitting out for quite some time.  Stale.  Cold. There’s a spark in those memories, but barely enough to bring a tiny bit of light to a very dark night.  One of those nights when you go to bed hungry because you’re too tired to fix dinner, and your pillow has been laying on the floor all afternoon so it’s plumped in an uncomfortable shape, and the sheets have turned sideways and the bathroom door creeks and moans in the breeze crafted by the overhead fan.  On those nights, her face is a bit stronger in your mind.  You can count the freckles on her nose again, and see the area where her eyes go from blue to grey.  The bounce in her bangs when she laughed her boisterous, low laugh.  You welcome those nights.  Those ideas that were once a person.  The taste of alcohol on her breath in a deep kiss.  Nothing beat that taste, so you try to trick yourself into tasting it again.  Trying to reheat a cold memory.  Bring life to a…

But it does matter?  They’re not wrong, you shouldn’t spend the rest of your life dwelling. It’s not a great way to become what you want to be.  A dwelling. A Basic and lifeless thing balancing on the cusp of creation and death.  Soon you will be dead and you will have spent too much time thinking about someone other than yourself.  But there’s the thing.  Too much time thinking about others?  Isn’t that what your mom always told you to do?  Think of others?  Spend more time thinking of others than thinking of yourself?  Treat others the way you want to be treated.  That’s what my mom told me.  She told me to think how others want to be treated and treat them that way so they will treat you the same.  Well, I want to be thought of.  All the time.  Loved, wanted, and thought of.  So why can’t I put all my energy into one person, maybe two if I have one in the spotlight at a time.  One off to the side, unfairly…  It’s not unfair.  It’s life. You struggle to be someone’s something. And I made her my something.  I did.  It was not all fantastic, she was rude and immature, sure, but everyone is. And she had all those issues she never really talked about or I just never understood.  I did it anyway.  I made her my something.  And it was all fantastic.  It made me smile every day.  She made me smile every day.  And I thought of her all the time and it was good.  And it was bad.  But I didn’t dwell on it.  Nothing like I do now anyway.  Because I didn’t have to.  I could think of things and I could be free.  Things unrelated to her.  Now it’s all related to her.  I have to struggle to un-relate things to her.  Baths, wine, kisses, sex, smoke, love.  I have a terrible time with it all.  These things that once just made my life a normal life now hurt.  Hurt real bad. 

I’m tired of it and I wish I could love things like I used to understand that I should.  It’s too hard now.   It’s difficult to understand why I should love anything as much as I loved her.  Or still do.  It’s hard to compare what is and what was since all I ever felt and feel is still in me in one form or another.  I have scars don’t I?  On my elbow and knee and wrist and even on my chin I have these scars.  So why can’t a feeling leave a scar, too?  A deeper one even.  Something not as seeable.  These scars on my skin hurt once, and sometimes if you pinch them right they still do.  And an emotional scar can get pinched.  I think so.

You spend so much time thinking about her, she must still exist.  Except she might not.  You haven’t spoken to her in months, years, decades.  You may have dreamed her.  But if you did and she left a scar then you must have once believed in her and she must have believed in you.  There was something fun about that, wasn’t there.  But life isn’t fun anymore.  It’s dismal even.  Full of other people’s laughter, filtered through that ring in your ears that everyone gets when they grow up.  You grew up. That’s what you did wrong.  And you can’t fix it.  Not without help.  Not without her.  Because she’s honestly the only help you really want.  The only person you would trust to grow up with.  If you did it together it wouldn’t be so bad.  Now you have to grow up alone.  Even if you find someone to stand next to and lay next to and dance with, you are still going to grow up alone.  Cold and tired and worn out like a very old sock.  You’re life has become an old sock and the only thing to do with an old sock is throw it away. 

So have another drink.  Take another nap.  Fail a test or two.  Dribble the soccer ball around the field around and around until the grass is as beaten and dead as your concept of hope.  It won’t matter.  The grass will even grow back and the field will have forgotten you were ever there. Just do it all because you have nothing better to do and no one to tell you you shouldn’t.  Mom and dad are away, and your brothers and sister won’t answer your calls.  You’ve fallen into a trap in the mind and you’re the new bait.  But nothing’s biting.  She’s not biting.

You have to be happy that you had the chance to know her. Because she did make your life a little brighter.  For some time.  And even if the rest of your life is very long, can’t that be the best part?  Can’t that be the part that made your life worth talking about?  He died very old and alone and he didn’t write anything impressive or invent a new item, but he loved her.  And she was worth loving.  He did that right.  And we should be happy for him.  And we should try to find someone, once, who we can take in all of who they are and love them more for it.  We should try to love the way he loved.  He was important because for two months of his life he loved the right way. Completely and forever.