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Monday, December 5, 2011

Life, Risk & Reality.


Why did I decide to spend the next few years just living out on the road? Mainly due to the fact that I took a risk. I know what makes me happy, and I gambled on the idea that doing what I love, all the time, would make me even happier. Not a single regret yet.

Society today tries to eliminate any and all risk from our lives. Everyone is obsessed with a "secure" future; the idea that without a constant job, family, & house you won't be "comfortable" in life. What is comfort anyway? Why do we connect comfort with all things physical as opposed to being comfortable with your self, with the life that you're leading and with the experiences you have; with your spiritual self.

"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 within a man than a secure future."

-Jon Krakauer

Eliminating risk has only created more risk. People stop thinking when they assume things have been programmed to keep them safe. It has been proved time and time again; antilock breaks causing more accidents on the road, gps navigation in the sky and out on the sea, fire alarms leading to more people letting fires start in the house. Over fifty percent of fatal accidents occur within a few miles of our homes. Why? Because, of course, nothing can happen when you're within your safe comfort zone, right? It's sort of like the idea of not putting all your eggs in one basket. If you do, however, you pay a whole lot more attention to that one basket then, let say, if you were to have several baskets with only a couple of eggs in each one. You'd think "oh if I drop one it won't be a big deal", but it still will be. Overall you'll be less careful.

When we are younger, science (and nature) is explained to us as being simple & predictable. Science projects involve a shit load of "controls" and only one "variable". We are also made to believe that life works this way as well when nothing could be further from the truth. Things happen, and you have to be able to think (a lost art) to get through them.

On the road there is no comfort zone, no predictability and no "knowns". Things take 5 times as long as you'd expect them too. Its all new, everyday. You can't rely on your knowledge nor experience at this point. Every condition (the bike, the road, the drivers, the weather, etc;) changes, the risk increases and you also have to be constantly adapting (something most people are hesitant to do nowadays) and just be in that moment, thinking. If you're not then things can go south real fast.

This brings me to another point, Reality. Who is actually living in reality? The people who believe spending forty percent of their time working will bring everlasting security, who believe that high fences and security systems will shield them from all the bad in the world, who believe unrestricted travel is unsafe and that the news is always right; or the people like me, in the fact that we live in the realism of the moment every minute of every day with a clear path ahead that is just as connected with nature as the forces around us.

I believe that most people live in some made up fantasy (no different then in a video game) where they think that they are somehow unattached from nature and the physical world, and where their biggest problems involve paper and how much they have of it.

Much of this applies to people's normal lives as well. During our teenage years we are all pressured to figure out what we want to do. I don't see any problem with having goals and plans, but it's that pressure that people put on themselves (and that gets put on them) for things to go exactly as planned that causes failure. One set back and some can't recover from it. They can't overcome it and continue on their path toward their goal because they were never taught to. From that point on they live day by day but lacking any direction or plan.

I'm still learning & thinking, having hundreds of hours of solitude definitely helps. A portion of these thoughts were invoked by a book, "Deep Survival", by Laurence Gonzales. It talks about how accidents aren't really accident and how the key to survival is not years of survival training or even having the right equipment but rather using your brain and adapting to the situation at hand.

1 comment:

  1. thanks for the Krakauer quote. Excellent. Your thoughts and observations are insightful too.

    ReplyDelete