Cairo, Egypt
6 June 2002
Reflecting on a year on the road - what does it mean? Photo by Michael Seto
Gray Glacier in Torres del Paine, Chile. A reminder of some processes where we are just a blink in their time."It was the best of times. It was the worst of times." One of the best book openings ever, aptly describing the past year.
I left New York City just one year ago on my trip around the world, now half finished according to my initial plan. A lot transpired in the past year, both in my life and in the world; the following peice focuses on the former.
"Lies, damn lies, and statistics."
365 days
7 continents
49 countries (20 in this past year) 60 rolls of film exposed
1 ancient wonder of the world (the pyramids at Giza)
7 rounds of golf
36 postcards written
111 meters of bungee jump
17 scuba dives (Galapagos and Red Sea)
42 Big Mac meals
1 bad bout of diarrhea
1 more Christmas on the road and the experience of a lifetime... priceless.
I now touched all seven continents in the world and all the oceans dividing them. My feet trod the dirt of forty-nine countries, twenty new ones on this leg of the journey. How many more before I return home?
I have gazed upon mountain vistas from Patagonia to the Rockies, icefields from Antarctica, painted Namibian deserts, sunrises and sunsets, even places where the sun never sets. I have hiked granite cliffs to vast barren salt plains to steaming jungles. I have been nearly robbed, machete'ed, and driven off a cliff - and maybe nearly driven mad, according to some.
Varied modes of transport carried me to these faraway places: delapidated taxis, chicken buses, rusting ferrys, decrepit airplanes, and worn-out soles of my Nikes. Shunning the 'magic' of air travel whenever possible (where three hours in a alumninum cylinder transmogrifies the landscape when you emerge) I stuck with means closer to the ground; more so to smell the passing flora and feel the land underfoot.
Since I get this question everywhere; thus far, my favorite places include:
- Antarctica: the sheer desolation and vastness of the icefields, glaciers and mountains force us to recognize the limited geography of our own minds and worlds.
- Serengeti/Ngorongoro Crater: National Geographic comes to life here with every large wild animal you had as stuff toys when a child. The horizon to horizon wildebeast migration boggles the mind.
- Namibia: the red painted desert landscapes and starry skies, juxtaposed with the German heritaged towns come as a hidden surprise in Southern Africa.
- Antigua and Oaxaca: (Guatemala & Mexico, respectively) - these old Spanish colonial towns offer respites from the grueling third-world travel of these poverty stricken countries and harken back to a more sophisticated lifestyle, albeit of the ruling class.
Time
Time plays its funny Hermes tricks on us all the time. From dragging interminably and to disappearing imperceptibly. Time and space is very much a paradigm in our minds - the interstices of our relationship with the outside world brought to us through our five limited senses. The mind easily slips these bonds.
I perceive my days as ranging from mind-blowing overload to mind-numbing boredom. Yet as the trip progressed, I allowed my mind to drift on its moorings, giving out more leash, paying out more line - letting it meander along it's subtle path, with me as silent, often baffled, observer.
I witnessed scenes from my past, reliving and feeling into past loves, past mistakes, past triumphs, past joys, and past despairs.
I reminisce endlessly about friends and good times in the past, from grade school to the Marine Corps to golfing with buddies in New York. Good times bring a warm glow in rose-tinted memories, paradoxically, even bad memories' hard cutting edge dulls in retrospect.
With each visit to the past I gain greater clarity into the meaning of each, at a personal and an archetypal level. Understanding that every experience carries both layers; and by freeing myself from the narrow personal aspect and embracing the eternal and universal, I came into a greater understanding of the harmony and natural rythyms of the world around me.
As counting angels on the head of a pin, how much time can pass in any instant? Is that time well used or carelessly discarded? I am convinced it all depends on how conscious we are during each passing moment, summarized in the Zen proverb:
Be Here Now
Try it sometime. Highs and Lows. Highs and lows define the perimeters of world travel; from the physical heights of Mount Kilimanjaro (19,028 feet) to the lows of the Dead Sea (-1,085 feet) - the lowest point in the world. Emotional highs and lows: the exhilaration and majesty of desolate Antarctica to the despair and desperation of Cape Town's black townships.
And metaphysical boundries get tested: from The Fall off a bridge at Victoria Falls, to the descent into the fecundity and femininity of the deep oceans, to the salting and cleansing of the Dead Sea; many psychic forces get stirred.
I learned about myself all along the way. I learned that I am an anal retentive type-A. (Though anyone who met me saw that in about three minutes.) I learned that I am intelligent, irreverantly funny, insightful, optimistic, and generous. I learned that I am insecure, naive, childish, pessimistic and selfish too. I learned that I love to read poetry; listen to (and sing) opera; write nonsensical travel articles, sleep-in whenever possible, and eat Big Mac meals. In the end, I learned that I still have a lot to learn.
Socrates said, "the unexamined life is not worth living." Little did I realize how little time for contemplation remained in my NYC/Wall Street/Palm Pilot/cell phone infused 'life.' Smelling the coffee a Sunday at a time or two weeks of vacation in a stretch stopped working for me.
Fortunately, I recognized the slow death of ossification for me and departed for something else. That is not to cast aspersions on those who covet, choose, and remain in this kind of life. It's true that one man's meat is anothers poison. We much each walk our own path.
I realized deep in my heart that money isn't everything. That was easy to say and write but hard hard hard to truly accept. I still don't know if I really believe it since I fantisize about winning the lottery a lot - and the weeklong Pebble Beach blowout I'd treat my friends to.
I began to understand the total freedom I possessed to live my life in any way I chose; BUT only by letting go all notions impressed upon me since birth of what life meant and what was a 'waste' versus what constituted a 'meaningful' life of a upstanding citizen. Dropping the internalized values of society's, my parent's, my friend's, and my coworker's perception of life took a lot - and I still feel it sneaking in the back door sometimes.
The path to salvation is narrow and treacherous, like a razor's edge, said the lama in Bill Murray's adaptation of the Somerset Maugham book, The Razor's Edge.
And as Lao Tzu says,"the path that makes itself known easily, is not the path."
I look forward to the next year and the next moment.
