So here I am on the Greyhound bus bound to Sacramento, being waited by my parents, who have missed me dearly all this time. I feels refreshing but different from all the other thousands of km traveled on the bus on the South American roads. The Greyhound bus is nice, it's huge and has AC, something not present in any buses I've taken in the past couple of months. The seats are mounted far from each other, such that everyone has lots of leg space, but, at the same time, this space, this invisible, impenetrable wall of air separates all of us. It's a different feeling being here, I feel alone, unlike in crowded south american buses, sitting among families with small children, gasping for a fresh breath of air from an open window while the bus shuddered and shook from another pothole on the road ... it doesn't sound too great from the side, but it felt like an adventure, the lack of the bounding rules gave these experiences a feeling of freedom that is simply absent in the highly organized, well ruled and designed western society.
I had this thought a while ago in my travels when trying to compare the western way of life and the south american, attempting to equate this to the quality of life. Of course, this question is fundamentally poorly posed because everyone's priorities and thus perception of the quality of life is different and thus any comparison is highly personal. Furthermore, one would only be able to judge that having lived a period of time in the western culture and in the south american countries (when I say south american countries I really mean all of them with the exception of Chile, Argentina and now Brasil, that have pretty much adapted the US way of life). I haven't lived in south america, and my only encounter with the working population was when doing some repair on the sailing boat in Cartagena, an experience that somewhat annoyed me with its slowness. But at the same time, there is so much to learn from the south american way of life. Their tempered nature is so refreshing and calming to the western way of life, that it throws any expectations immediately out of the window, and when a person is exposed to a way of doing things other than how "it must be done" it's already progress, it's already learning, already "thinking outside the box". Even if you realize (as I have) that some things are indeed done better in the western world, still you may find that some others aren't, and their brilliance and simplicity will conquer you, changing how you think, how you see the world, how you live... This is what travel really gives you - the experience of living life in a different way than what you've been told to do since childhood, what you've seen in your friends, and what's accepted as the universal "good" way of life. You get to experience 2 things: the culture in which you're immersed (you just have to open yourself to it) and life on the road, with just a small sack on your back. If the first experience is a journey through the outside physical world, the second one is a quest within you, within your perceived powers and capabilities and freedoms. I say "perceived powers" because these are the first boundaries that break as you set out on your journey. After a few days on the road with nothing but your backpack, you'll feel a freedom and an inner power that comes from within, a power that makes you the master of your path, your journey, making you realize that everything is easier than you thought and, indeed, as someone once told me "the hardest decision you'll have to make while travel is the one to start travelling". Sure you'll make mistakes, sure you'll fall, and there will be nobody to pull you back up again, but you'll do it by yourself, you'll learn quickly, you'll push your limits in this self quest, thus building self reliance and belief and trust in yourself. You'll make decisions everyday and learn to trust them and to correct them when the outcome gets out of control, thus you'll learn about yourself. Sure living the sedentary life can give you similar insights, or better yet more useful ones pertaining to living a "productive and exemplary" life in this society, but it's a different set of experiences. When you leave all your material possessions behind (with the exception of clothes, some tools, your hands and knowledge) your shoulders become weightless and open, and that state somehow triggers a psychological openness to try new things, meet new people, experience different cultures, learn to live in a different way. Once you experience that, you'll never go back, because knowledge cannot be undone, once you unlock that black box you'll know exactly what's inside and you'll never be the same. And i'm glad that it is so...
The experience of travel has elevated the meaning of "eat, pray, love" to a whole level of new heights for me. It's a quintessential motto and, at the same time, summary of my personal travel story. It represents the gastronomical, spiritual and personal journeys one is bound to experience in his/her voyage, provided that they are open to these experiences (generally travelers are the kind of people that are open to much more than that :)) The spiritual and physical journeys are really one and the same thing, different faces of one entity, dancing together intertwining and supporting each other, after all "love" is a purely spiritual feeling very much affecting our physical world. This blurring of physical/spiritual boundaries, combined with the freeing power you get to first hand experience while travelling strengthens an idea once expressed by my wise friend KumooJa "we are all magicians, and we dream our world into being". The statement gives each one of us ultimate authority over our lives, power to mold it into whatever we want to experience, change it, redirect it into whatever makes us happy, isn't this the ultimate goal of a human life?
I am extremely grateful and happy to being capable of travel, to having met amazing, wonderful people on my path, travelers and locals. They came in exactly the right moment and at the right circumstances to bring me to the point where I am right now (sitting in a greyhound bus :P). Every one of them is a source of knowledge, experience, and love at the same time, "magicians" in their own right. Indeed, more important than the cultural treasures, historical and natural sites and places of interest in a country are the people. The living creatures who reflect and represent their culture, who through their warmth and friendliness set the tone of the country and who, for me, became primary travel destinations on any journey.
So I return home, to a steady job (or something like that) a sedentary life of some sort, but at the same time I know I'll never be the same, because knowledge can't be undone, because I liked too much that empowering fresh feeling of being on the road with minimal possessions...and it doesn't have to stop. Although the formal travels are over now, but the journey through life never stops, it's always an adventure, a trial, a chance to learn new things, experience, meet people, see nature, camp out, sleep in a hammock, do whatever makes you happy, whatever empowers you...you can be a traveler through everyday life! There is a Brasilian proverb stating "the saint next door doesn't perform miracles", it's true, and sadly i realized this only after being far away, but it's never too late to change. And whenever the journey through life becomes too "sedentary", too predictable and cliche, there are still so many countries I haven't seen, so many places to experience and live through, so many people to meet...i just hope I'll never loose the courage and the open mind to do that. In the end, the journey never stops, we are all travelers though life, backpackers on the world's roads, most of us just don't see it as such. So live free, don't let worldly possessions weigh down your back, live and feel through every minute of your existence as if it's completely new, travel often, and open your mind and heart to adventures, people, love...
