A blog I found
In all life’s momentum it’s hard sometimes to detach from the chaos and think outside the routines that bind us. Often times those routines seem so intrinsically vital to survival and happiness that they unfairly block our ability to perceive and grow from our emotions and experiences.
As I was following an online guide aimed at configuring some computer related task, I was sidetracked by the author to reference his blog as an example for the final output of this project. I navigated to the blog and was oddly taken back, not by anything related to the project, but rather his sincere depth and inspiring ability to write. There was intensity, a passion, which was pervelant in his posts that seemed almost desperate to convey the meaning within each sentence. I continued reading his blog with a curiosity I found strange, considering how many millions of blogs exist, and eventually landed at the ‘about me’ section. He proceeded to very directly describe himself by stating:
“Hello, my name is Scott and I am traveling around the world.”
Following this statement was an explanation of both how and why he chose this transience, which peaked my moderately hidden exostenialism:
“The next question that I get a lot is why It’s tempting to quote Sir Edmund Hillary (because its there) but there is more to it than that for me. I think traveling is a reminder of mortality in a healthy way. A reminder that like death, life is bigger than me. A reminder that sitting in traffic cursing your fellow man is a poor way to spend the small allotment of time we are allowed on this earth. A reminder that you are going to die, but there is the amazing life before death. To acknowledge the truth of death and be anything but cynical takes a great act of will, at least for me. And one of the things that helps me keep my optimism is the beauty and diversity of human existence around me. I am hoping that traveling the world will enrich my limited understanding of what it means to be human.
To me what it means to be human is to really pay attention, to think critically about my own assumptions, background and how those and a myriad of other sensations bombarding me coalesce into life, to existence.”
This philosophy flys so heavily in the face of monotiny and ambivoulance. I began realizing how sedated my mind and soul had been, unintentially of course, but with another realization that what’s important is a mere manipulatable state of mind, folowed by a strong desire to harness it. The true profoundness of this statement may be moderate, however its effect on me was unexpectedly strong. He continued:
“In a recent commencement speech at Kenyon University Author David Foster Wallace said something close to what I am getting at: “The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. I have learned this the hard way, as I predict you graduates will, too.
Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe; the realist, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self- centeredness because it’s so socially repulsive. But it’s pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people’s thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real. “
I think Wallace is absolutely right and I think travel helps to jar us out of that hard-wired setting of ME, MY REALITY, MY PERCEPTION. Traveling is so rarely about me. It’s about others, their lives, their houses, their countries, their beliefs, their manners, their world. I want to focus my attention outside myself and my default setting as Wallace says.”
The internet is filled with so much good yet offset by such powerful emptiness that when I fall upon something profound it reminds me of why I use it. Not that this was a lesson in the importance of the internet, but rather a nudge in the right direction from an unsuspecting, unknown stranger.
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