Approximately one year ago, I arrived home from a year studying abroad through RYE in Italy. During my year I kept a blog of my travels and experiences. The blog however ceased its updates when my life once again became routine, and I was back in the USA. Well my last two months have been anything but routine. In fact my last two months have been two of the most fun, exhilarating, and entertaining months I have yet to live through. I have been on a two month expedition through what will conclusively be seven different countries (a quick stop in Denmark remains). My travels have carried me to Iceland, Ireland, Hungary, Slovakia, France, Italy, and Denmark. The experiences and lessons of these travels undoubtedly constitute a new blog post. When I was in Italy I updated readers on all the highlights and complications of my life abroad. However to update any and all readers on all the triumphs and tribulations of the last two months, you would need a stack of papers taller than the Empire State Building. So I don’t even intend to attempt such a feat. Instead I intend to talk about the realizations, and changes that my mind made as a result of my backpacking throughout Europe.
Before I start I want to create a distinction between my current expedition and my year abroad. The difference is while on exchange, you need not worry about where your next bed may be, or when your next meal may come. Although there is not one easy thing about exchange, it is in a sense travel with training wheels (not to discredit the many cultural benefits exchange holds that backpacking simply can't offer). For if exchange is a bike with training wheels, then backpacking is a 10 speed Cannondale.
If you have made it to here; I invite you to buckle in for the long haul and read the rest of this post.
Upon arriving in Iceland, I was no rookie to travel. Yet, I had never traveled outside the confines of my parents, school, or Rotary. I was finally on the Cannondale, and I was ready to race. Me and my two travel buddies (Nash, and Errol; who were even more juvenile to travel than I was) had arranged to stay at the apartment of our friends brother, a 20 year old college student named Olafur, and that was all we knew of the journey that lay ahead. In Iceland life began to take course, the gears started to shift on us, and all thoughts of home were quickly forgotten, like they were the dreams of a night before. once in Iceland we were stunned by the price to do anything and everything. We found ourselves without the ability to afford the basic comforts of home we were all accustomed to, such as never going to bed hungry, decent sleep (4 men in a 1 room apartment), and just a general feeling of comfort associated with the ease of knowing your surroundings was all stripped from our realities. Our wallets, and our location could not support the comforts we had previously put so much enjoyment into. So as humans we did as we are designed to do and adapted to our surroundings. We learned to adapt to what we could afford. For example there was one period in Iceland when we spent a little less than a week circumventing the island, during the stint we lived off of two tuna sandwiches a day. An amount of food I would have previously called an average sized lunch. Instead of beds we became accustomed to sleeping bags and busses. Instead of knowing what lay behind the bend, we became accustomed to old tattered road maps. Yet in exchange for our adaptations we were given endless adventures. One morning I was waking up at small cabin in rural northwestern Iceland, and I began processing the way of life we had been enacting during the last weeks in Iceland and it finally hit me. That is, Life begins when our acquired comforts no longer seem to be necessary, or to be comforts at all, and that the real comfort from life comes from living in itself. Yet living isn't achieved on a couch or park bench. Life is best lived on a knifes edge. Like Oscar Wilde once said “Life is either a big daring adventure or it is nothing at all.”
From this moment of realization, a transition of mentality started to take course in my mind. First it came about me slowly, but then it encompassed my way of life like a full moon encompasses a night’s sky. I began to care less about money, I began to care less about my next meal, I began to care less about my next comfortable bed. Instead I cared more about surrounding myself with good people, I cared more about chasing my desires with a burning passion, I cared more about living, and not passing my life by on the wayside. At the end of the day, so to speak, you will always find a means to food, and you will always find a place to rest your head. I ask all my readers to not waste another second sitting idle on your beds, couches, or sofas because you don't think you could accomplish chasing your dream. An idle mind is where death will first take hold. Character is fate. STOP WORRYING ABOUT THE PECUNIARY; ACT ON DESIRE NOT FEAR. “However mean you life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life poor as it is. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from a rich mans abode.” - Henry David Thoreau. No life will be beautiful all the time. Even a king must weep at times. Only a fool hopes for happiness in all faces of life, all the time. For he would then miss all the other emotions which life can lend upon us. It is paramount to find the beauty in even the deepest of depressions. How could a mountain seem high if you had never seen a valley? We find a rose that is black to be just as beautiful as one that is red. Make no mistake, you must learn to enjoy the reality which you see, for paradise only exists where you let it; the minds eye. No matter how far away your dreams may seem, follow them, as there is no remedy to regret. We all have a drum beat in the back of our heads, if you listen to yours, a chorus playing to the same beat is surely soon to arrive. If you can’t find the job that makes you happy, listen to your drum beat, it will lead you there. If you are worried to find the love of your life, listen to your drum beat, it will lead you to her. if you feel lost in life, listen to your drum beat, and it will carry you to where you need to be. Yet don’t rush the roads that life takes, too many of us are in a hurry to be starved, as soon as we have finished eating. Most of the beauty belongs on the road itself. That is why we are all entitled to the PURSUIT of happiness, and not just to happiness.
I have just begun the novel which I will justly title My Life. There is so much I stand to still learn, but sharing the little knowledge I currently hold with all who care to listen is the just thing to do. To digress, after I held this realization in my mind, I decided to live the rest of my voyage to this rhythm; to my drum beat. As I did, the Cannondale shifted to 10th gear down a steep hill. I was on a knifes edge navigating through out Europe. Looking out across Budapest from the top of its tallest cathedral or free diving in the Mediterranean sea. Life had become the daring adventure Oscar Wilde had foretold centuries ago.
Currently I am face to face with a return to California, where within a week of arriving I will start university, and travel will be replaced with study sessions, yet I will not let that silence the drum. When faced with the mundane, the mind becomes an equally beautiful place to explore as the world around you. You can dive into depths deeper than the deepest ocean cave, or rocket into dimensions more untold than the farthest galaxy. Never stop dreaming! In acceptance of the end of my voyage throughout Europe; I bought tickets for next summer to spend two months is South America, dropping my bank account to a number that would have thrown a two month younger me into a cardiovascular Pompeii. Now I see it as a sign of the progress I have already made, and a testament to the direction I'm heading, the direction of my dreams.
Although this blog failed to focus upon the aesthetic and natural beauty my eyes feasted upon, or the plethora of new and wild experiences I received in the last two months, I promise you they were as glorious as the lessons they left me with. I challenge everyone to take the leap and follow their drums as they beat in the direction of dreams. So go out and follow yours. If you stayed with me this long, thank you, and I hope you enjoyed the lessons that I so enjoyed learning myself.
Love,
Logan
