I stare at the moon.

I watch my friends swim in the ocean.

I listen to men argue while they eat.

I join in a pick-up sports game.

I drink tea in a friend’s house.

Ordinary. Familiar. These statements read like average moments in the life of any young man or woman living in the modern era.

Is it not strange, then, that these commonplace scenes are among the most precious and poignant memories I’ve acquired from over a year spent living abroad in Asia and Africa? That as I think back over those wondrous 13 months of fate’s wiles, it is these memories which rise first to the surface and crash over me like whitecaps?

That even now, as I lie in bed hours after I should have surrendered to sleep, it is a simple photo of a river in Kyrgyzstan which lays the final brick in my resolve to leave behind my home and journey into the unknown once again?

It’s not the white yurts which dot the green slopes leading up to snow-covered mountains. It’s not the language of Kyrgyzstan, nor its customs, its food, or the exotic look of its locals.

It’s this river, hemmed in by the tricolored foliage of autumn, posted to Google Maps by a user named Мамытбек Турдуев. I will leave behind the comforts of home for the rigors of the open road, because of this river, discovered in the happenstance of a few dozen arbitrary taps and swipes through a digital map on glass rectangle.

It is this ordinary river, just as it is those ordinary memories.

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Going through our daily lives, we are regularly in contact with the remarkable. Only, it doesn’t always feel that way. The regularity of routine has a way of obscuring extraordinary acts, merely by association with the more specific acts which frame them.

The moon is just “the moon.” You’ve seen it from your bedroom window every night since you can remember and even painted it with watercolors a time or two.

Hospitality is just “hanging out with friends.” You’ve been doing it with the same people for as long as you’ve been alive, and whenever it happens you’re usually more focused what you want to do: play Catan or watch a movie.

Conversation is just “talking.” It happens so much you often put on headphones to block it out, and more often than not you’re using it just to order a coffee or talk logistics with your coworkers.

If you fail to find these things remarkable, it’s not your fault.

Remember, as a kid, when you’d suddenly be struck with the inspiration to move around the furniture in your room? After a year of having everything in the same spot, you’d change it all around in one short hour. And then, like magic, you’d notice the room again. There’s a window here. The ceiling is oddly high in this corner. This wall is empty, and its huge. Of course, the room was there all along, but the focus was on your stuff. By moving around your furniture, the room came into focus again.

The room is the extraordinary: the wonders which underlie every golden moment.

The furniture is routine: the familiarity which draws away your attention and obscures what lies beneath.

Moving the furniture around is the act of travel: the vicious ripping away of context, which forces your focus back onto what has been there all along.

5:00 a.m., Sri Lanka, on the way to a jungle safari.

We stopped at a random roadside shop to use the bathroom, and in a throwaway half-minute while I waited for the others to trickle back out, the gibbous moon, which had been just another given for all my life, so took me aback that I return there in my mind every time I behold its pale tear in the dark fabric of the night sky, regardless of wherever I am in the present.

The moon. A floating rock, ceaselessly circling our own floating rock, the earth. That pale, nocturnal counterpart to its father the sun. Seen a thousand times—only now noticed.

9:00 p.m., Laos, sick with a high fever.

Even the nearest town was a far drive away, and the time to hail a taxi had long since passed. I knocked on the door of a local Laotian man staying in the next room over, and was promptly given both Tylenol and a promise to drive me to town on his motorcycle the next morning—though I know for a fact he would’ve taken me that very night if I’d asked. I’ve received medicine a hundred different times before from a hundred different people, and yet this is the exchange which has stayed with me.

Hospitality. Being made truly welcome by an other, and imparted with goods or services which cost them, but not you. Experienced a hundred times—only now properly appreciated.

1:00 p.m., Tanzania, eating fresh goat in a mud hut.

“How many people can the meat from one goat feed?” I asked with the purest of intentions, inadvertently starting a five-minute argument between the tribesmen I ate with. Though I couldn’t understand the vehement Maasai words the men spoke, their body language told me everything I needed to know about where my question had taken them. How strange that a discussion which I couldn’t understand, stands out from all the others in my mind.

Conversation. Weighing the merits of new and old ideas with people who are interested in doing the same. Hearing others’ stories and sharing your own. Partaken in tens of thousands of times—only now really listened.

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When everything around you changes—when you’re surrounded by a language you can’t understand, a food you’ve never tried, and a city you’ve never navigated—the deeper majesties that exist unchanging everywhere shine through with a renewed radiance. Traveling is moving around the furniture of your life, forcing back into view the room behind it. The room was there all along—you just missed it because you were too focused on the furniture.

Of course, this perspective isn’t always top-of-mind for all travelers everywhere, and it doesn’t have to be. Whether you notice the room or not, travel is also wonderful in the way it continually brings you into contact with new furniture. The act of experiencing new things alone is fascinating in its own right.

But new things are… well, just that: new things. And the thing about new things is that, if you wait long enough, they become old things. If what you’re after is novelty alone, that feeling of wonder is bound to fade.

To contrast the idea of mere novelty with the deeper truths I’m putting forward, consider the nearly ubiquitous traveler’s experience of watching a foreign celebration of some sort.

The first thing you always notice is the exoticism. Maybe the men are shirtless. The women are painted. They’re singing in such a strange way, and playing musical instruments you’ve never seen.

And yet, where is the real wonder in moments such as these? Is it just in the performers’ foreign accoutrements? Or is it in the simple fact that you’re beholding fellow humans on the other side of the world doing the very same thing you do in your home country, and which humans have done for time immemorial? Singing, dancing, making merry, and doing it together?

The initial novelty is what grabs your attention. But the simple act underneath is what puts the lump in your throat and sets your eyes to burning. What makes you feel happy for having seen it, and forever changed for the better. It’s what gives you a lasting love for these people you’d never even thought of before last year.

But why?

Why do these simple acts—singing, dancing, hospitality, or conversation—and these simple things—the moon, or a random river in Kyrgyzstan—hold so much pull on our hearts? Why do they pluck, wordless, at some hidden set of strings inside of us, bringing forth such sweet melodies?

In his book The Mountain Shadow, Gregory David Roberts says,

Only hope goes on forever, because hope doesn’t belong to us: it belongs to our ancestors, the first of our kind, whose brave love for one another gave us most of the good that we are. And hope, that ancient seed, redeems the heart it feeds.

Though I disagree with Mr. Roberts that hope is the only thing that goes on forever, his point is a profound one: these deeper acts between humans, and these natural places on the earth—they don’t belong to us.

On the other hand, things like culture, customs, fashion, and even food—these things that travelers find exotic—are always changing. Sometimes the changes are cyclical, while other times something goes out of style never to come back in. It can take something as trivial as a single celebrity figure to change the culture of entire swathes of a population. These things are malleable, fickle, beholden to the whims of individuals and groups. They belong to us.

Hope does not belong to us. Love does not belong to us. Joyous celebration, hospitable kindness, rousing conversation, do not belong to us. The yellow-white moon, the coldness of a raging river, the eternity of the ocean, do not belong to us.

These things are bigger, older by far, than any one person, group, or civilization. They belong, as Gregory David Roberts says, to our ancestors.

But even those ancestors can’t really lay claim to these things. For didn’t they inherit them from their ancestors? As we follow this rope further and further into the past, its true beginning loses itself in the fog of time, until we’re left with something frayed, a widening of causality that seems to escape definition.

Whether there is an explanation for this concept, whether there needs to be one, and what it would mean if we find it out, are questions I will leave in the hands of the reader.

Perhaps the foremost cause of human suffering is the subconscious idea of “us” and the “other.” Tribalism. Us good, other bad.

And yet, when you go to a place filled with others, you will almost invariably find the otherness to be superficial. Indeed, it’s the very otherness itself that exposes its own subservience to these deeper truths that don’t belong to any one of us. And when you see this—when you really feel its wordless power—a wall crumbles inside.

A wall whose crumbling, if only it could happen in every human heart everywhere, just might be enough to turn this world into something truly holy.

I often find myself looking at photos of my friends and me, or my brothers and their wives, knowing one day those very same photos will be looked at in wonder by children and grandchildren who say things like, “I can’t believe how young you were!”

Speaking honestly, it’s a big struggle for me to balance my love of life and the present moment with the knowledge that one day my “legs won’t work like they used to before,” to quote a famous philosopher I know.

If there is beauty in age, death and decay, I’ve yet to find it.

Mar 31

2.

I’d like to ask for a moment of silence for Chapstick.

Chapstick is a perfect example of how humans tend to focus on the things that go wrong and not the things that go right.

Chapstick does what you need it to every single time you use it. Every time your lips are dry and painful, it fixes the problem—with a 100% success rate.

In fact, the only time Chapstick ever really fails you is when you simply forget to buy it or bring it with you—and that’s a failure on your part.

Imagine how you would feel if you did what you were asked—no, literally fulfilled the very purpose of your existence—every single time you were needed, and yet never got a single speck of credit or recognition for it.

That’s how Chapstick feels, every day.

Apr 2

3.

I’ll never forget the day when I first began to really entertain the possibility of long-term world travel.

It was such an obviously insane, life-altering idea, and I was so disenchanted with my corporate accounting job, that I remember being in the bath (yes, I take baths, sue me) and getting this distinct thought that, even if the trip never actually happens, even if I do spend the rest of my days living a normal 21st century life in the US, just dreaming about it is sweet enough.

But as sweet as those dreams were, they were like bitter lemons compared to that which I experienced outside of my imagination, every single day, when I stopped dreaming and stepped out into the real world.

If you’re in this same place now, trying to decide whether to take your obviously crazy idea and make it a reality—this is your sign.

Apr 6

4.

How To Be Liked By Anyone In 3 Easy Steps (almost no one can complete step 3):

1) Ask the person a question about their life. This can be anything: Where do you work? Do your kids play sports? What do you do on the weekends?

2) Listen to their answer.

3) This is the part almost no one can do: actually care about their answer. I know—so simple, and yet so difficult. Why is it so difficult?

Repeat.

That’s all there is to it.

Apr 8

5.

A somewhat startling revelation I had some time ago is that the actions I dislike most in others are the actions that I myself do, and hate myself for doing.

Has anyone else noticed this? What does it mean?

Apr 9

6.

“Why do you write?”

My first trip, a 9-month solo backpacking journey through Europe and Asia, changed my life. It was a solely experiential endeavor—I had no agenda except to know this world and to be known by it.

But as I get older, the thought of a repeat trip of this same sort feels somehow a little hollow—like I’d be wasting my life or my time in some fundamental way.

My desire to see the world has not diminished even a single iota, but I now so strongly feel a complementary desire to to take that magic—the wonderful, awful, incomparable hugeness—of the nomadic life, and make it known to you—whoever you may be.

Apr 10

7.

I just got excited to write my next article, and I realized that’s because the act of writing it is going to help me find out what I really think on the topic.

Writing, by its very nature, forces you to organize your thinking and engage with the best, most coherent form of whatever mess of thoughts you have floating around in your head.

A world in which everyone was a writer would be a world in which everyone made just a little more sense.

Apr 11

8.

Miss me with that hardcover nonsense. The mass market paperback is the peak book form.

Apr 12

9.

Whenever I speak with people who don’t workout regularly, I get this strong sense that they view exercise as a sort of “price of admission”—it really sucks, but it’s just what you have to do if you want to be healthy and live a long life.

This is decidedly untrue, and I’m certain I’m not alone in feeling this way.

For the last few years, I’ve been totally obsessed with running—I’d say it makes up about 90% of my physical exercise. The “runner’s high” is real, especially when you have the right music going, and I can honestly tell you that, were there no fitness benefits at all in running—if it didn’t add a single day to my lifespan, if it didn’t improve my heart’s efficiency, or strengthen my leg muscles—I would still do it.

Why?

It makes me feel good.

Oh my goodness, the happiness and wonder I feel during and after a good run. The love I feel for people and places, the gratefulness I can’t help but embody with every fiber of my being. Running is, really and truly, its own reward.

I think many things in life are like this—or at least, should be like this. One of the reasons I feel confident in my path as a writer is that, even if it never becomes a way for me to make a living (like I want it to!) I’d still show up and do it, every day. It is its own reward.

I’m convinced that a truly good life must prioritize such pursuits: pursuits where the ends don’t actually need to justify the means—because the means justify themselves.

Apr 13

10.

Everything that confuses you makes perfect sense, and if it didn’t confuse you, that would be even more confusing.

Last night, I arrived home from work and turned the knob on my lamp. No light. I was confused.

Then I remembered that that morning, I’d bumped against the wall light switch connected to the lamp’s outlet. This probably cut the power to the lamp.

To test this, I flipped the wall light switch and tried the lamp’s knob again. Alas, there was light.

Rewind back to my initial moment of confusion, when I turned the lamp’s knob and yet the lamp didn’t light up. Suppose the world had behaved how I’d expected it to at that moment: I would have beheld an illuminated lamp that had no electric current flowing through it—a physical impossibility.

This would in fact be much more confusing than what actually happened, even though I, in my colossal ignorance, would have been perfectly satisfied at the time.

Next time you are confused by the world, just remember that it always makes perfect sense—it’s you that usually doesn’t.

NOTE: By “the world,” I’m not referring to other people. Just natural, physical things.

Apr 14

Part 1: True Love

I wake up and make my way to the deck of our ship. I’m greeted by sensations which have become all too familiar over the last 10 years: the smell of saltwater, a constant breeze, a strong sun, and the general clamor of the crew.

This morning, however, these sights and sounds are subtly different from what I’m used to. The sunlight is just a bit more golden, the breeze more humid and warm, and the smell carries more than merely salt and water. But most marked of all is the energy of the crew: voices are raised louder in excitement, and movements are carried out with a fervor I haven’t seen in months.

Within an hour we’re gliding along parallel to the thickly wooded shore, the strong coastal wind propelling our ship northward—toward civilization, and toward home. Slowly I begin to pick out familiar landmarks, until we round the final bend and I see it for the first time since we began our 10-year voyage: my kingdom.

A wide bay opens up before us, atop which is situated a massive city. Busy harbor streets fade into terraced hills which rise higher and higher, eventually turning into mountains and culminating in a castle so magnificent I still have trouble believing it’s real. This is my city, and it is alive.

But as wonderful as this place is, I would trade it all in a second for my most valuable treasure in this world—and though I’ve just spent a whole paragraph describing my kingdom to you, it barely even graces my thoughts as my mind forms her image in anticipation.

We had our first kiss in the warm waters of the Indian ocean, with a full moon almost as bright as the sun beaming ethereal white light down upon our salty skin. We were married in the great hall of my castle in a celebration without equal. And yet, special as these moments and places are to me, the happiness of their memory is but a shadow compared to that which we find anew, every day that we’re alive and together.

For when we talk, and when we make love, we do so with real intention. And in both of these actions (which are really not so different from one another when each is performed for the right reasons) we discover the new and the wonderful. The material world fades, and the words of our mouths and the movements of our bodies take us places that are undiscovered to us both—how we find them, I’m not entirely sure.

From the moment she came into my world, I’ve known true happiness—for she is the companion I’ve searched for my entire life. In both physical form and in temperament, she is utterly perfect. Even the expected mandatory marital sacrifices, such as quelling the desire for other women in order to remain faithful to my promise, are totally foreign procedures to me—bizarre, irrelevant rituals—for I really and truly desire no other, and I know I never will.

And now as the ship nears the dock, I see her. Though there are throngs of people clustered at the water’s edge awaiting our return, there is no mistaking my wife, my queen—if you saw her, you’d know what I mean.

Our eyes meet for the first time in 10 years, and everything else fades. A million shared thoughts are exchanged in the space of that first moment of eye contact. There is no one else around. No sounds, no city, no ship, no dock—only us. She’s even more wonderful than I remember, and the thousands of memories and scenarios I’d thought up and played out during the countless lonely nights at sea fall laughably short.

There is perfect trust in those eyes, and I know she sees the same in mine. For all these 10 years, she’s waited for me, never once doubting or leaving or searching for love elsewhere. I know this just as I know water is wet and the sky is blue. And in this moment, as the ship comes to a halt and our eyes remain locked onto each other, I have the answer to that old king’s question, “Would you rather be feared or loved?” Fear is not necessary when love is all. And now it also becomes obvious to me that the peace and prosperity of our kingdom is no accident, for the essence of our bond is of such purity and strength that it emanates outward from our castle, sowing all manner of good things in the hearts of our people.

My throat hurts, and tears fill my eyes as I step off the gangway and approach her. Where others search for love and never find it, or search and settle for the wrong person, I have found true, happy-ending, storybook love. A love that has only grown stronger after 10 years of separation. A love that makes life itself feel like dreaming.

And with that word, “dreaming,” my wife—the single most important person in my entire life, whose every thought and movement I know intimately, with whom I’ve shared a lifetime of memories, and whose arms are even now reaching out to embrace me—herself fades into my memory, as a new, and yet dreadfully familiar remembrance rises up from the depths and digs in its fangs, dissolving reality itself around me.

I wake up—for real, this time. I sigh and reach over, grabbing my phone to check what time it is.

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Part 2: The Disparity

I want to apologize for beginning this piece in such a cliche manner. If I was doing the reading rather than the writing, I’d probably be rolling my eyes right along with you.

But I didn’t really have much of a choice, since this post was inspired by many such experiences exactly like the one recounted above: being in love with a person in such a full, deep, and meaningful way, only to wake up and realize it was all fake. How could something that felt so real—in a way, even more real and meaningful than the waking world—just be all in my head? And I felt the best way to get that feeling across in a written piece was to pull the exact same trick on you, the reader. So that’s what I did, and I think you’d probably have done the same if you were me.

My search for love in the real world has been a tortured one, in no small part due to my own stubborn romanticism. As I grew older and wiser, and started and ended relationships, I began to notice a stark contrast between the way love is depicted in art and media—and, indeed, in my own dreams—and the way love actually seems to play out in the real world.

In these fictional creations of our human species, we see the common theme of love that can move mountains. We see strong, courageous men beat back evil and face danger in ways that seem superhuman, all to save the woman they love most in the world. And we see unspeakably beautiful, faithful women similarly defy the odds set before them in order to reunite with their true lovers.

Curiously though, most people seem capable of witnessing these kinds of stories on the big screen at the movie theater, or in the pages of their most recent bookstore find, only to box it up neatly in some sort of partitioned “entertainment center” of their brains and carry absolutely none of it over into their actual lives. “It’s just the movies,” these people say. “Yeah, Braveheart was cool and everything, but I gotta get to the office at 8 a.m. tomorrow—what’s it got to do with me?”

I’m not like that. The entertainment center of my brain is not partitioned, and the things I see in movies, the things I read in books, and especially the things I experience in my own dreams, flow like a waterfall right into my personal life, affecting everything from what I’m going to eat for breakfast to what I decide to do with the next year of my life. Like I said, I’m a stubborn romantic.

But the truth is, after a diet of Hollywood movies and bestselling novels, things like marriage, and love in general, often fall depressingly flat in real life. I myself have ended meaningful relationships with women over such mundane concerns as:

• “Can I do better?”

• “Do we really get each other?”

• “Isn’t is supposed to feel better than this?”

If this makes me sound like a terrible person… I won’t defend myself. Maybe I am.

But it’s not all that unreasonable for me to point out that love in the real world is often vapid at best—that very fact is acted out in front my face every single day. Listen to the way most husbands and wives speak to each other, how willing they are to sacrifice for each other, or how faithful they really are when temptation comes.

Couple all this with my vivid dreams—which plunge me firsthand into love stories of such gravity and scale that even Hollywood falls flat in comparison—and you have the bulk of what inspired me to write this piece.

Part 3: Dig In, Or Surrender?

Right now, I feel a resolution. Perhaps this is just a vestige of childlike romanticism that will disappear with another decade of life, but even as I sit here writing this, in a little outdoor patio in southern California, I can’t help but feel this resolution—is it anger, passion, foreseen regret?—to never settle for a love that’s less than what it could be, to never end up just another fat, boring husband with the wonder for life drained out of him, returning home from work and immediately gluing himself to a couch, choosing a TV screen and a beer over the deep, wanting eyes of his wife.

I want get home from work after 25 years of marriage and still feel butterflies in my chest at the thought of seeing my wife—my lover—and then lose some of the breath in my lungs when I realize how beautiful she still looks, even though she’s now the single most familiar person in my entire life.

I want to talk theology, philosophy and history with my good friends only occasionally, because I talk about them with my wife every single day—and in fact, I’m the one who has to put an end to the debate or the discussion because she’s even more fascinated by all these things than I am (not to mention better at understanding them).

I don’t want to spend a single night’s sleep on different sides of the bed. I want to wake up every morning with her nestled into my side, skin-on-skin, and who the hell cares if we get too hot or can’t sleep properly that way—aren’t we in love?

But at other times, I feel a surrender as well—and I’m sure you, reader, will be able to identify with that part, for better or for worse. I mean, what about just after an ugly breakup with the person you thought you’d spend forever with—no, that person whom you were absolutely certain was finally the one you’d spend forever with? There’s that awful nagging voice, which I myself have heard many times, that insists you’ll never find someone. You’re destined to be alone, and the best you can do is find love vicariously through your dreams or the experiences of others. In these moments, entertaining such high thoughts as “never settling” is like singing your own funeral dirge.

As I write this now, I’m 27. Just a few more years of this and I’ll be in my thirties, with no true love to show for it—and at that point, won’t my pool of options be growing dangerously small?

Or maybe my standards really are just far too high. Maybe there’s a good reason why most marriages seem ordinary and stale when viewed from the outside. Why should I pretend it’s even possible for me to find anything different?

But a decade of turning these questions over and over in my mind has convinced me that there is a path forward through this wilderness. I’m hesitant to say that it requires compromise, since not compromising is quite literally the entire point of this piece—but it does require patience, a subtle shift in perspective, and above all, some careful balance.

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Part 4: The Way Forward

First, if you think that the magic you read about in books or watch on the big screen is entirely divorced from the “more boring” real world, then I regret to inform you that you simply do not know history—or even current events.

Have you ever tried to write a book, or a screenplay? I have. You know what inevitably happens, try as you might to avoid it? The story always ends up modeled, to some extent, after real events and real people you know from your own life.

My point is that real life came first, and stories came second. And that means that, pretty much without exception, the most remarkable fictional love story ever penned, or the most glorious dream you’ve ever had, will have its equal somewhere in the annals of history.

I could take you through the famous stories: William Wallace liberating Scotland, Cleopatra falling in love with Mark Antony, or even Stanislav Petrov singlehandedly saving the world from a nuclear holocaust. Yes, these all really happened—and I bet if they were written down in a fictional story, we’d be sitting here talking about them and wondering why real life seems bland in comparison.

But I prefer to think about the lost people of history. The untold millions whose names we’ll never know—whose only legacy is a little broken piece of a letter back home, or a black and white portrait with no words or context clues to be found. I promise you that hundreds, if not thousands, of these people lived utterly remarkable lives beyond your wildest imaginings. They were separated from their lovers for decades and finally reunited in perfect faithfulness. They really did fall in love at first sight and never looked back. They made the impossible choice to sacrifice themselves for family and for country, and by some miracle of fate ended up living to tell the tale to sons and grandsons, even if it ended up lost to us today. Though these stories are undoubtedly few and far between, they are out there.

But maybe you have something still greater in mind: true perfection. A Garden-of-Eden-style love that defies even the little flaws and mistakes that make us human. I get that, and I think about it and hope for it perhaps more often than is healthy.

But even these longings that we have—for perfection of all kinds, but especially for a perfect love story—exist for a reason: they give us a target to shoot at. Yes I know, the whole “perfect love or no love at all” mindset is clearly not available in the real world. Try as you might to find it, you just won’t—and trust me, I’ve tried. But that doesn’t mean this will never be the case.

I mean, many of our oldest, most beautiful, reality-defying love stories were written by people who lived in a world that, if anything, was much less perfect than the one we live in now. A world where going hungry, working your fingers to the bone, and just fighting to survive were commonplace. Is it any surprise at all that these people longed for perfection—for a place and a future where everything was beautiful and lovely and serene all the time? Of course not.

So if I were to ask one thing of you, it would be this: Don’t dismiss this piece as a fanciful, immature demonstration of my own naivety that I’ll come to rethink as I get older and wiser. For this is how we make progress towards a better end: by dreaming, and imagining, and longing for things which are so obviously and so outrageously far out of our reach. If we didn’t, then things would always just stay the same.

So don’t expect perfection. Don’t expect a love that perfectly concords with what you’ll find in the final pages of a Jane Austen novel, or at the end of a dream about a king and queen reuniting after a decade.

But hope for it.

Look towards it.

Work for it.

Whether in this life or in the next, you might just find it.

It’s remarkable just how accessible and friendly the world reveals itself to be once you actually begin to explore it.

Mar 5

2.

Amazing how many things we worry and stress about merely because we have the luxury to. A few days of backpack camping through the wilderness will take you right to the bottom of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: food, water and shelter, baby.

Mar 11

3.

For some reason I’m always viewing the present from the perspective of what could be lost. I was taking in the lush scenery of Catalina the other day during my camping trip when I imagined some poor kid in the dystopian AI future, looking at pictures of nature on a screen, and longing beyond words to view with his own eyes what I was at that very moment perceiving so freely.

If it can be taken away from you, then it is a gift.

Mar 16

4.

Once an experience becomes memory, is it really possible to differentiate between what actually happened and what your brain projects after the fact? And whether you can or cannot, does it even matter?

Mar 20

5.

One of my favorite things about writing is the way it forces you to think, and think coherently.

So often I’ll have a seemingly brilliant idea floating around in my head, but when I set pen to paper and am forced to actually flesh it out, I realize that a) it’s riddled with inconsistencies, or b) it’s actually not all that profound.

Writing is, of course, just a form of communication—but it’s not subject to the flow of time the same way the spoken word is. The writer pieces together the whole of their message and then presents it all at once in a permanent medium, and it can then be analyzed again and again with no loss of clarity or fading of memory.

This makes incoherence and lack of substance in writing stick out like a sore thumb—and I think it’s beautiful.

Mar 21

6.

The hard question every Substack author must ask is “Why should someone read me instead of Dostoevsky?”

So many remarkable, time-tested novels have been written that the average reader cannot hope to get through all of them in a single lifetime—and that’s not even to mention all the informative non-fiction books out there. So why should these people spend their precious time on your publication instead?

It’s true that the best writing usually gains popularity with time, making renown a good judge of quality—but this isn’t always the case. So from one unsuccessful Substack author to another: Make it your goal to be the exception—the one undiscovered author who gives your readers a perspective and a narrative that’s never been crafted in quite that way before—and you just might find a group of people who, bewilderingly, decide to pass on Crime & Punishment so they can read what you have to say instead.

Mar 23

7.

Thinking about starting a new Notes series called “Out of Context Journal Entries.” Installment 1:

“Once I got to Leaf Guest House, I spent hours talking to the owner about America. He used to live in Texas and Princeton, and knew tons about the country and had a lot of crazy stories of his store getting robbed, cowboys with cars full of guns, etc. I never thought I’d be exchanging conspiracy theories about 9/11 and JFK with a Sri Lankan guy, in Sri Lanka.”

2/28/23

Mar 24

8.

The older I get, the more I realize just how many of my complaints about life are lose-lose.

I was looking for parking the other day in a super busy area of my neighborhood, totally fed up with how ridiculously hard it was to find a spot. But then I realized, if it was the other way around and the streets were empty with parking spaces in abundance, I’d be muttering under my breath about what an awful place this is to live, and how I should really move somewhere else where things are actually happening, gosh darn it.

We live in a world with trade-offs: improving something in one department might worsen something in another. Whenever I feel like complaining about something, I try to recognize if it falls into this category—and if it does, I contemplate the other side before voicing my complaint.

Mar 25

9.

“If you could time travel, what’s the first thing you would do?”

Immediately go back to 480 BC to die with the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae.

Men, can we agree on this?

Mar 26

10.

Does anyone else ever feel overwhelmed by how many potential lives you could live?

I want to backpack through Asia again. But then I hear a folk song, and suddenly I want to buy land in Wyoming and become a rancher. I also want to get a studio apartment in NYC and walk to work, go back to college to get another degree, move to Alaska and become a fishing guide, and a thousand other things.

Sometimes it feels like I’m going to die living only a fraction of the lives I could have.

Mar 29

In U.S. law, the “excited utterance rule” allows into the court statements that were made in response to a “startling event,” reasoning that “a statement made under stress is likely to be trustworthy and unlikely to be a premeditated falsehood.”

Though I wrote this journal entry as most of the drama was finally beginning to wind down, the events of the trip that it recounts were so unexpected, so startling, and so perilously close to falling straight over the edge of the world into true disaster, that what follows cannot be described as anything other than an “excited utterance,” in the most trustworthy sense of the phrase.

First, some context. I lived in Tanzania for four months in late 2023, working with an amazing non-profit organization, From Hearts 2 Hands, started by my friend Briana Greene. The latest big project we’d been working on was the construction of a massive library for the 700+ students of Lendikinya village, way out in rural Maasai land.

This trip—the one recounted below—was a big one. The library construction was finally finished in October 2025, and so we—Briana, myself, and the rest of the non-profit team—were returning to Tanzania for one week to get the library fully decorated, stocked, and ready for the grand opening, which was scheduled for the end of that week.

It just so happened that that very same week was also election week in Tanzania—and the government in Tanzania is of the “so corrupt there’s no need to even hide it” type. But I fear if I say any more, I’ll end up spoiling the story before even beginning it.

I trust I’ve given enough context to get you started. Enjoy.

Part 1: Arrival

The Village | Library | New Friends | Ceremony | Love | New Language | Dinner

Arriving in Lendikinya, we were greeted with a level of hospitality I’m not sure I’ve experienced anywhere else.

I got a bit choked up at first sight of the library in all its glory—thinking to myself, “Briana did this?”—and then Mr. Greene (Briana’s dad) having a similar moment inside made us all more emotional still.

Emanuel (my new stoic Maasai friend who wore a leather jacket the whole trip), and “Meleo,” the picture-perfect exotic wise Maasai warrior, escorted our group down to a series of huts they had built brand new for us. As we reached the area, we were greeted by a group of Maasai women, dancing, singing, and hugging us with huge smiles on their faces—smiles that spoke of real love. Meleo began pounding his walking stick on the ground and chanting along in harmony with the women’s singing, before handing the stick to me and urging me to do the same—which I of course did with honor.

How is it that a group of people who have next to nothing in common with me, who speak a different language, eat different food, come from a very different culture, and live on the other side of the world, can so instantly feel like old friends, whom I would trust with my very life? As I fought back tears, I was struck that this cross-culture love and friendship might just be the most beautiful thing there is—and perhaps it hints that, beneath all of our differences, there is some shared value that both parties possess in exact copies, in perfect harmony, and it’s much more important than the clothes we wear, the food we eat, or the place we live.

On the walk back to the library and our campsite, I grilled Emanuel on every single Maasai word I could learn and write down, to his great enjoyment. I learned that the Maasai word for “God” and “sky” are one and the same.

Back at the campsite, we ate a delicious meal of soup, rice, beans and chapati prepared by our local Tanzanian chef Alfred and his crew, who absolutely spoiled us the entire time with three hot square meals a day, regardless of whatever drama happened to be unfolding at the time—and drama there was indeed.

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Part 2: Things Go Wrong

Internet Shutdown | Fainting | Revived | Riots & Violence | Friends in Trouble | Vomiting | Civil War?

We all knew that Election Day was on Wednesday, but we didn’t know exactly what to expect in terms of riots and general unrest. Things kicked off with me trying to connect one of the library computers to my personal hotspot. It connected just fine, but nothing would actually load. This was when Seuri, the local Maasai library clerk to-be, informed us that the government had casually just “shut off” the internet to try and contain the rioting. We officially had no access to news, iMessage, WhatsApp, or anything using data.

Around 10 a.m. I heard Briana yelling “Dad? Dad!” in a panicked voice from the other room, then yelling for Derek (the senior-most doctor in our company). Derek then sprinted in like Tom Cruise, and immediately started tending to Mr. Greene, who had basically passed out due to lack of hydration after battling some unnamed stomach illness and exhaustion from jet lag. As always in situations like this, I am in awe of doctors, their knowledge, and their ability to calm and comfort those in the most immediate need.

Keep in mind, we are way out in the middle of nowhere—the closest hospital is a tiny military hospital 30 (45?) minutes away on egregiously potholed dirt roads. Thankfully, we had three doctors in our group at this point, so Mr. Greene was quickly revived and taken care of.

Fast forward a few hours, and Sam, our Tanzanian videographer, comes up to me saying “Man, the riots are really crazy out there. My brother is in Dar es Salaam and he said it’s getting bad.” Again, the internet is down, so he’s getting this information just by phone calls or domestic SMS messages from friends—those of us without local numbers and credits are totally in the dark. A few minutes later, he tells me he heard five people were just shot in Leganga, which is literally a one-minute drive from Usa River, where the Kuboja’s live—the Kuboja’s being my former host family, who I stayed with during the entire four months I used to live in Tanzania—and also where we all just came from before arriving in the village.

Around this exact same time, Lily—the Kubojas’ daughter, who’s with us in the village—tells me her mom hasn’t come home yet, and Joshua, her dad, is getting worried. I ask where she went, and Lily tells me she was visiting her friend Elizabeth, who lives where? Leganga. At this point my stomach is starting to rumble with nervous energy—and the timing here is just perfect, because I just now get word that Mrs. Greene (Briana’s mom) is outside vomiting in the bathrooms, which are essentially just tents with porta-john bottoms. Michelle, another one of Briana’s friends, had arrived earlier, so we now have four doctors in our group, and they’re all really pulling their weight at the moment. There’s lots of casual banter about stool consistency.

It’s now evening, and we continue setting up the library, but there’s definitely a slight pall over the night, as we’re all concerned about the growing unrest over the election and Mrs. Greene’s situation. Thankfully, we’re about as safe as you can be in Tanzania at this time, way out in this remote Maasai village. Edson, a local Tanzanian and integral member of our team (and one of my dear friends), assures me that the majority of the riots are in the cities, where the military are urging the citizens to fight the police, who support the oppressive current administration. This is scary in its own right, since it means this isn’t just a standard protest to be quelled by the government—it’s two rival factions of the government pitted against one another, which sounds to me like civil war material. And also, the main town of Monduli isn’t that far away, so it’s hard not to feel nervous that the conflict could somehow make its way to us.

Part 3: Things Get Worse

Electricity Problems | False Alarm | Fire | Mysterious Car | Sickness Spreads | Bitter Disappointment | Motorcycle | To the Hospital

Suddenly, the power is cut. The entire library just goes black, and there’s a hideous two-second silence as everyone just contemplates the implications here. Did the government do this? Is it intentional? Are there people outside? There’s a tangible increase in my unease now. The disorientation and limited perception from being in darkness are extremely unnerving.

Flashlights are turned on, and we’re all saying “Ohhh boy, here we go,” when the lights suddenly come back on. I give it about two minutes before I relax fully, as I was nearly certain they would just go off again shortly. Thankfully, they held for the rest of the night. Don’t worry, however—the drama is far from over.

I forget who delivered the message, but I’m told there’s “a fire outside.” I rush outside to see, and sure enough, in the distance I see an orange blaze on the hillside, the ferocious wind driving the smoke to the side and (ostensibly) fanning the flames even more. I’m having the same thoughts I had when the power went out: What the heck is this? Is there a mob out there? Unlikely, I know, but come on—on this night of all nights the power is cut and there’s a fire out there? If this is all unrelated, it feels like a pretty remarkable set of coincidences.

I talk to Edson, and he assures me that this is totally normal, and the tribesmen often do controlled burns just like this in order to prime the farmland. I allow myself to relax a little bit.

That is, until I’m getting water from the mess tent, and I see a tiny little blacked-out sedan pulling in to the front of the library. Janae, another member of our team from America, is with me at the time, and I tell her it’s probably just Edson—but then we both remember that Edson’s car is an SUV, not a sedan. A fair amount of sketchy experiences have taught me that knowing with certainty what is out there is almost always better than the extra safety gained from staying back—so I rush to the front of the library to see, stomach churning hideously. As I write this now, I actually forget who was in that car—I think it was Edson after all?—but it’s safe to say it was a friend, and not someone threatening.

Then Derek comes back inside from where he, Briana, Michelle, and Jessie (another doctor friend) had been working tirelessly tending to Mrs. Greene, who still wasn’t showing any improvement. “Patient three,” he says. It takes me a second to realize he’s talking about Briana, who’d told me earlier that she was starting to feel nauseous, but couldn’t be sure if it was sickness or just anxiety. Not only is this just tremendously unfortunate, it’s also a shame because tomorrow is the grand opening of the library, and Briana is obviously the guest of honor, and is supposed to give a tour and speech.

At this point, Derek is pretty dead set on taking everyone to the nearby military hospital, so we abandon our pathetic project of moving the patients inside and making a makeshift privacy screen with a ladder and a tarp. The patients are transported to the car, but Briana has to stop halfway there to spend five minutes retching violently into a plastic bag.

I wanted to be respectful of space, so I didn’t come too close, but there’s one heartbreaking moment which will stay with me for a long time, where I caught sight of Briana from the other room, seated with the plastic bag in front of her, and tears streaming down her face. Knowing Briana, I have no doubt her tears are caused not by her illness, but by disappointment over what feels like the negation of months (if not years) of hard work to get this library project over the goal line. Why now? Why, at this final moment, looked forward to for months, where we’re all in Tanzania with the big opening day scheduled for tomorrow, did these unfortunate circumstances all converge? I’m swept with a wave of sadness as I see her, and I’m thankful for Zachary (another American team member and friend), who hugs her softly.

Around this time (about 3:30 a.m.), we hear a vehicle approaching fast, which is extremely odd since we’re so far in the middle of nowhere. We all rush to the front of the library (at least, those of us who are mobile), and again, I just have no idea what to expect, so I’m assuming the worst. It’s some guy alone on a motorcycle, and we all watch with bated breath as he, thankfully, just whizzes by, never to be seen again. “He’s a normal guy just passing by,” Edson declares confidently.

We load up the car with Edson at the wheel, Derek and Michelle as the traveling doctors, Briana and Mrs. Greene as the patients, and Liza and Ellen (local Tanzanian members of our team) as moral support. On a providential, literally last-second whim, I confirm with Edson whether or not Ellen (his wife) is going with them. He says yes, but I remind him that she is the only person in the entire group who can communicate with Edson (or anyone!), since they have local numbers with SMS credits. She of course exits the car and stays with us after I raise this concern, and I hate to think of what might’ve happened had they left sooner and we were fully unable to communicate with them at all.

(Edit: as I write this now, I remember Sam also had a local number with SMS capability—so maybe this wasn’t quite as dire as it sounds, after all.)

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Part 4: Things Get Better

Recovery | Library Completion | Watermelons | Village Jog | Basketball | Gutting a Sheep

I’m happy to say that this was basically the peak of the madness, and everything after this point was a cooling-down. The hospital accepted the patients with no issues, and they slowly recovered, at least enough to participate in the opening ceremony the following day (though Briana was basically pushed to the brink, and possibly even extended the duration of her sickness from over-exertion here). Derek also informed me afterward that at one point during the ride to the hospital, Edson’s erratic driving veered the car into a pothole so deep, and the impact made a sound so wretched, that he was absolutely certain an axle had broken. And yet, that little gray car just powered on.

We finished prepping most of library rooms, which ended up looking amazing even though the shipping container with the majority of the big items was still held at customs. Throughout various points in the setup process, we had Maasai men crawling around in the rafters locating ceiling beams in order to hang hooks. We handed out watermelons to the students (kindly provided by American team member Stephanie); gave tours of the library to the village elders and women; Briana, her parents, Edson and Liza were gifted literal cows and sheep (a massive honor coming from the Maasai, who subsist primarily on livestock); I went on a run with the charismatic, always-smiling Seuri through the village, almost impaling myself on a stick in the dark; Zachary, Derek, Sam and I played an intense game of basketball, which still hasn’t technically finished; I was called over by Sam and Emanuel for the somber honor of helping to gut a sheep which we would eat the next day, the kidneys of which Emanuel popped into his mouth on the spot, still warm; and I learned the Maasai word for “fart.”

Part 5: Departure

Safari | Farewells | Unrest | To the Airport | Flights Home

The day after, our group parted ways, some going to a safari (which was actually one of the safest places to be amidst the riots, which, again, were primarily urban), and some going back home to Usa River. Eventually, we all met up again at Beatrice Kuboja’s house for final goodbyes, which were, as always with Tanzania and its amazing people, harder and more conflicting than I expected them to be.

We drove to Usa River, and then to the airport afterwards, with our safari guide and friend Hans, who, along with Edson, did an incredible job keeping us all safe and unworried during such a crazy political time. Still, it was unnerving driving on roads with charcoal stains and broken barriers, and passing by torched, destroyed gas stations, with the only remaining operable ones absolutely mobbed with hundreds of drivers desperate for gas. It felt, not to be dramatic, apocalyptic, especially when there were confirmed reports of shootings and bombings coming from the bigger cities. Again, if a civil war was going to happen, this sure felt like the way it would start.

Only four of our group were actually able to take their original flights back home, but I’ll spare the reader the ensuing drama experienced by those less fortunate of us, because 1) it’s incredibly tedious, and 2) as I write this, Briana and Zachary are still trying to confirm their new flights (which may or may not leave) and I’m still sitting on the tarmac—so this tale may yet be far from over.

“Yeah, someone’s gotta go back to look for that old couple,” Nick said.

I looked up from my crackers and peanut butter (the last remnants of the MRE I’d just devoured) and met Nick’s eyes across the huge, metal campsite table.

I sighed. “Yeah, I know.” I glanced around at Kyle and Kevin to see if they agreed—it was clear from the slow nods and vague looks up toward the setting sun that they did. Still, none of us wanted to fully commit ourselves, and the reason was obvious.

The four of us had just completed day one of backpacking across Catalina Island, having labored through 10 mostly uphill miles in the blazing sun, each with a 30-lb pack on our shoulders. We were in the middle of enjoying a few well-earned comforts (those comforts being self-heating camping meals and lukewarm coffee in a bag). Oh, and we had just taken our shoes off. That was the most exquisite comfort of all.

“I will say though, it’s not like this trail is way out in the middle of nowhere,” I said. “Like, worst-case scenario, let’s imagine the old guy had a heart attack or something. I feel like the trail is close enough to the roads and stuff that his wife would’ve been able to get help pretty quickly.”

“Yeah, that’s true,” Kyle said. “Or maybe they just got really tired and walked to the road to get a ride back to town.”

That made a lot of sense. I could feel the burden of responsibility easing its ponderous weight off of my already abused shoulders.

“Yes,” I agreed, “see, that’s the kind of thing that I feel is much more likely than anything bad happening.” And that was a completely true statement. Everyone agreed, and I let that comment marinate while I finished my meal.

But it was no use. The sky overhead was steadily darkening, and I had that sort of bubbly feeling in my stomach that I’d experienced enough times over to know there were only two things that made it go away: taking decisive action to remedy the problem immediately, or doing nothing and then letting a lot of time pass so the whole thing begins to feel hazy and unimportant.

Unlikely as I knew it was, I had a brief portentous vision, in which I was back home—back in the land of internet connection—and reading a news article about the first death on the Trans-Catalina Trail in decades. And as I scrolled down, would you look at that: it was the very same old couple we had passed on the way in!

If that was how the future turned out, it was one thing—but if I could have prevented it and chose not to, that was another thing entirely.

“Alright, I’m gonna go on a little walk to look for them,” I said. I drank down the last few ounces of coffee (which, even though it was lukewarm and chunky, still tasted much better in the context of a camping trip than any pot I could brew at home) and stood up to put my pants and boots back on.

“Are you going all the way back down the mountain?” Kyle asked.

“No I don’t think so, I’ll just try to get to a spot with a view and see what I can see,” I said. “What’s your guys’ plan if I don’t come back?”

I forget what the response was here, but I think it was something funny.

I went into my tent and grabbed my knife, flashlight and phone. I briefly considered bringing my little medical kit with me, but decided that was a bridge too far. I was a little worried, but almost certain nothing was actually wrong.

Feeling like I was floating without my pack on my shoulders, I exited the campsite and started back down the trail.

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The first thing that happened as I walked was that, to my surprise, an entirely separate section of the campsite that had previously escaped my notice appeared on my right. Looking down into it, I could make out around five other campers—and sure enough, the old couple was with them.

Feeling relieved but not all that surprised (like I said, I was almost certain nothing was actually wrong), I briefly considered just doing an about-face and returning to the campsite to get ready for bed. But since I had already started on my little walk, I decided to continue on.

The trail dipped and rose, descending into little wooded sections before emerging again onto exposed hilltops. The temperature was falling slowly and biting ever so slightly through my flannel shirt, but the utter ease of walking without my pack on my shoulders made the bargain a good one.

The air was almost perfectly still, which was a striking contrast to the whistling wind we’d felt for most of the day. Besides the sound of my footsteps, everything was completely silent, giving the impression that I was, somehow, the main event. For this moment in time, the world watched me as I walked upon it.

As I went on, I could scarcely believe this was the same trail the four of us had trekked up a mere hour or two ago, since almost nothing looked familiar. I suppose we were all so tired from this first day of trekking, and—being so near the night’s campsite—so consumed by thoughts of showers and food that the serene beauty of this section of trail had totally escaped our notice.

And what a bitter tragedy it is to have passed over beauty when it is first presented, even if there does come a second opportunity to perceive it at a later time. For the existence of this second opportunity is always a question mark, always uncertain, until the very moment it actually comes into being, which itself is often due to random, lucky circumstance: forgetting to close your window, wondering what that sound was, or going to look for some strangers who may have gotten lost on the hiking trail. And for every scene of beauty that is missed the first time and then redeemed by the second, there are multitudes of others for which this second time never arrives—and which, by extension, are rendered experientially nonexistent by the carelessness of the first encounter, or else doomed forever to that void of existence without perception. And a truly beautiful thing with no one to perceive it is perhaps the saddest thing I can imagine—the most needless form of futility.

The scrubby bushes to my left rustled jarringly, startling me. I caught just a brief blur of textured gray and ochre as a tiny island fox darted out directly in front of me, barely larger than a squirrel. I stopped short and watched it cross the trail and disappear once again into its unseen world underneath the brush, a world forever inaccessible by we humans. I wonder what it’s like under there.

After a few more minutes of walking, I emerged onto a vast, wide open section of trail. To my left, the steep side of the mountain continued up, dotted in relatively unremarkable bushes. But to my right, the land dropped away spectacularly—how did we miss this on the hike in?—revealing one of the most majestic sweeps of land I have ever seen.

Gently undulating hills of a deep, rich green color extended in layers for miles, row upon row texturing the land in an immaculately imperfect pattern. The sun, which had just passed beyond the horizon, bathed the scene in a heavy orange light, beneath which, and beyond the very last layer of hills, lay the shimmering presence of the sea, seemingly unmoving, unbothered, existing in a state of perfect peace, seeming to promise eternity.

I permitted myself a few moments to be silent, to empty my mind of discursive thought, and to engage in no activity except pay attention to all the phenomena my senses were delivering. I have found this practice to be profoundly enriching. The human mind is at all times in conversation with itself: automatically replaying conversations, troubleshooting the future, or wondering what someone else is thinking. Even while unconscious with sleep, the mind forces narratives upon its owner in the form of dreams. To turn the entire spotlight of one’s focus onto the experience of merely existing can result in an appreciation for life itself (and, more specifically, this life, your life) of an intensity that would be impossible to come by otherwise—and made even more precious in the modern age because the actual carrying out of such an act has become, sadly, so rare.

As I continue to gaze out upon this remarkable sight and time passes, thoughts nevertheless begin to resurface, as they always do. But these thoughts I welcome.

I think of how it was my concern for the elderly couple that had brought me here to see these wonders of nature. I think about how happiness isn’t reliably found by those who chase after it, but rather, discovered as a byproduct by those who chase righteousness instead. My resolve to always act honorably, nobly, and selflessly is redoubled.

I think of how I’m beholding this glimmering ocean in peacetime, when better men than I, carrying heavier packs than I, have beheld the very same ocean amidst crippling gunfire that quickly ended their capacity to behold at all.

I think of the vast stretches of time that this land has weathered—the uncountable masses of creatures that have lived, reproduced, and died, lived, reproduced, and died, over and over and over, underneath the same sun and the same moon, across days of such number that they can mean nothing to the human mind, creatures which will continue to do so without even a hiccup at a time so far in the future that my own bones feed the trees.

I think of how the slightest difference of decision five years ago could’ve placed me at this very moment on a different continent, perhaps beholding a sunrise instead of a sunset, and under entirely different circumstances. I think of everything that had to go right—perfectly right—for me to end up on this exact hilltop, seeing these exact patterns of light and shadow, and even having the kind of mind that’s able to appreciate it all in precisely this manner and not another.

I think of a child existing 100 years from now, in what could very well be an AI-controlled urban dystopia, looking at photos of nature on an LED screen and wishing with everything in her that she was born in a time before it was all destroyed and replaced by concrete and metal, when she could look for even just one second upon the soft hills and fields and forests available to me now for free in such massive quantity and variety.

I think of all the complexities that underlie the phenomena I see—the fact that the light of the sunset appears to deepen from orange to red because those specific beams of light have long wavelengths, which my eyes and brain receive, notice, and decide to display for my consciousness as “the color red,” a concept which is itself indescribable through words alone devoid of experience.

I think of all the angles of beauty this world offers. This sunset-bathed scene before me is beautiful, and my brother’s firstborn daughter is beautiful—and yet, to try to compare the two, to ask which one is the most beautiful, is ludicrous beyond measure. How can we compare the loveliness of a sunset with that of the smell of coffee in the morning, or a page-turning novel, or a woman’s body, or the first day in a new country? We cannot, of course we cannot—and yet somehow, gloriously, we live in the kind of world that gives us access to all of them.

And finally, as I sit here writing this now, I think of you. I think of what hidden struggles you’re wrestling with, what barriers have risen up to prevent you from seeing this world’s beauty in all its fullness, from knowing and being known. I consider telling you that I’m eager to know you, hoping to be that person who’s always there for you, even if just as a listening ear—but I hope that’s something you already know. I think of the title you read (that I still have to come up with) that made you click on this article. I think about whether this piece is any good, or if there was too much unstructured rambling for you to like it. I think about what exactly it is that I want you to take away from it.

And after thinking for a long time, I still don’t know. I hope you do.

I was in a foreign country when some type of coup broke out. The whole city lost power, and from my vantage point on the street, I could hear gunfire as a militia group went floor-by-floor through a darkened hotel building, executing everyone they found.

But then I woke up, and my real life—which I had progressively come to regard as mundane—felt like a newly discovered paradise.

I beheld my white sheets, sunlight streaming onto them from the open window above my bed—an open window through which I heard chirping birds and the quiet morning streets of southern California, not the harsh barking of gunfire—and felt a happiness beyond measure.

In an instant, I went from weighing the merits of making a run to the border to escape a literal hell, and thinking about what it would finally be like to die, because I am going to die tonight, I know for a fact that this time it’s really going to happen and I’m not prepared, I’m not ready at all—

—to scrolling through my Substack feed without a care in my mind.

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Somewhere in the world right now, there is a person. This person is just like me—they need to eat and drink, they like to laugh, they probably want to fall in love someday, and they definitely don’t want to die. They have a name. This person has witnessed—or is witnessing at present, in real life—those very same horrors from which I was so easily able to escape by simply opening my eyes.

They have no such way out. Fear, dread and nausea are their default states. They spend hours fantasizing about what it would be like to live my “mundane” life—and were they magically dropped into my shoes for even a single day, they would likely spend the whole first hour on their knees in thanks to God.

I remember being struck by this quote from The Hobbit movie, when Thorin, at the moment of his own death and at the end of their harrowing journey, says to Bilbo, “Farewell, Master Burglar. Go back to your books, and your armchair. Plant your trees, watch them grow.”

I feel the thirst for adventure probably more than anyone else I know, but may I never forget that a mundane and simple life—with features such as books and armchairs, gardens and trees, friends and card games and coffee—so long as it comes with peace, is truly one of the high points of human existence.

Peace and quiet are not the natural states of the world. They’re not waiting there for you when everything else is taken away. This type of life is earned by the blood and tears of generations of courageous, yet fallible men and women, and maintained at present by the same.

If you’re experiencing such a life now, know that it’s far from ordinary.

It’s an unimaginable delight.

For all I know, a piece like this makes no sense on a platform like Substack—most articles I’ve seen of this nature have been out in the Wild West of the “real” internet.

And thus I was faced a dilemma: I’m as yet unwilling to launch my own real website, but I also really want to share this information with you—hence, my decision to post it on Substack anyway, and hope against hope it might get two likes or help out at least one would-be adventurer.

First, I’d like to make three quick points about the relationship the truly curious backpacker should have with his gear:

1. Your gear should serve the adventure, not the adventure your gear.

Few things are more shameful than the “backpacker” who becomes so obsessed with buying the perfect gear that the adventure (which provided the reason for buying the gear in the first place) ends up taking a back seat in importance.

Don’t get me wrong, prepping all your gear before a trip can be extremely fun, and I’m even a bit of a perfectionist myself—but seriously, if you’re more excited spending $300 on your new backpack than you are spending $300 on your one-way flight to Kazakhstan, you should rethink some things.

2. Don’t skimp out on the important items, but ignore the replaceables.

When I was preparing for my first trip, I made the right move by buying a really good quality backpack and daypack—but then I got so absurdly deep in the weeds that I literally bought portable detergent flakes for washing my clothes.

Somehow, I seemed to have obtusely overlooked the simple fact that all the places to which I was planning to travel happened, by golly, to have people living in them—which meant detergent and other similar trifles would be readily available at every grocery and convenience store I would pass (which was a lot).

On the other hand, a sturdy backpack that was comfortable and wouldn’t burst asunder after a few months of hard travel was much more difficult to find (and in many places, impossible).

3. Be willing to change out your gear as you travel through different climates.

If you’re starting your trip in tropical southern Africa, don’t lug a parka with you just because you’re planning to end in freezing Nepal. And conversely, if you started out somewhere cold but have since moved on to warmer climes, be willing to ditch your jacket and wool socks without shame (my preferred method is to give them to a homeless person).

You’ll save yourself months of carrying useless dead weight around on your back—and like I said above, you can always purchase a new jacket or socks along the way if you suddenly have need of keeping warm again.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get into it.

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Bags

Most backpackers travel with two backpacks: a main bag for all of their stuff, and a smaller “daypack” for little excursions.

Now, don’t be fooled—the concept of a daypack does not give you license to buy a 70-liter main backpack and fill it with 80 pounds of stuff. If you want to experience the true freedom of the backpacking life, you still want your main bag to be portable enough to take it everywhere you go with ease.

Main Bag

I’ve used my trusty Aer Travel Pack 3 for many years and many trips at this point, and it shows absolutely no signs of wearing out.

While a little on the heavy side, it’s extremely comfortable, and at 35 liters, I find it holds everything I need with a little room to spare—which is exactly what you want in order to make room for any extra stuff you might pick up along the way, such as gifts for family and friends.

I also highly recommend getting a few packing cubes, as they’re a game-changer both for keeping your stuff organized and maximizing the amount of space in your pack.

Daypack

Though to my great regret I have since been separated from it, I used the Matador On-Grid Packable Backpack for my first trip. It appears to have been discontinued, but I liked it so much I might consider buying one secondhand for my next trip.

For a daypack, structure and comfort isn’t as important as lightness and packability, since you’ll be using it mostly for single-day hikes and trips.

Finally, I made a point to ensure both my main bag and daypack were more-or-less waterproof, since I usually bring my laptop and a handful of other electronics with me. If you’re planning to travel for a long time, I promise you will get caught in a rainstorm sooner or later—so this feels pretty essential to me.

Clothes

Clothing is the area where the first-time backpacker invariably commits the most egregious overthinking.

No, you don’t need a fanny pack, or a “money belt,” or a pair of “100% Merino Wool T-Shirts With Remarkable Temperature Regulation Qualities That Keep You Cool In Hot Weather And Warm In Cold Weather And Which Don’t Have To Be Washed Nearly As Often As Regular T-Shirts” like I thought I did.

The same goes for shoes. When I set out on my first trip, I was wearing a pair of Columbia Fairbanks that I had, after agonizing research, ascertained were the perfect blend of hiking and everyday-wear functionality—The Perfect Shoe. After two days of feeling like an ogre walking around Barcelona in these ugly things, I switched them out for a pair of white Converse All-Stars, which stayed with me for almost the entire remainder of my nine-month journey.

And when, during this trip, I decided to do three-days of trekking through the mountains of northern India, guess what I did? I bought hiking boots. In India. Crazy, I know.

5 t-shirts

Or however many you need to put off laundry day for as long as you need to.

1 long-sleeve collared shirt

Nice to have for formal occasions (like nice restaurants or dates), and especially for cafés with overzealous AC.

1 pair of pants

I must confess I did use and very much like the Western Rise Evolution Pant. They’re light, durable, and dry off very quickly.

That said, for my next trip, I’m just going to bring regular pants, probably something cheap and durable like these Dickies Work Pants.

1 bathing suit

These double as my workout shorts as well.

5-10 pairs of underwear & socks

Again, the only real consideration here is how long you want to be able to go without having to do laundry (or how offensive you’re willing to smell).

Jacket (optional)

This really depends on how cold or rainy your destination is. I usually like to bring some type of light rain jacket or windbreaker with me to start since it can useful in all climates, and then purchase a fleece or something warmer if I decide to venture into colder territory.

1 pair of everyday shoes

Not terribly important, as long as they’re comfortable.

1 pair of running shoes (optional)

For me, these are not optional. I actually first became a runner while backpacking, and it’s since become one of my favorite ways to explore a new city.

1 pair of flip flops or slides (optional)

These are nice to have if you’re in a warm and beachy place like Thailand.

Belt

Ever since my leather belt started growing a mold culture and smelling like a dead animal in the humidity of Sri Lanka, I’ve leaned away from leather belts while traveling.

Sunglasses

Unless you’re going to northern Alaska in the winter, the sun will probably be bright.

Technology

The necessity of the below items is very subjective, as it all depends on what type of trip you’re planning to have and to what degree you like to coddle your technology.

Laptop, case & charger

While technically optional (especially in the age of the smartphone), I find that having an actual computer with you is extremely handy for conducting research into the next country on your list, and just for hedging against any uncertainties that may come your way.

For example, I ran out of money a little sooner than I expected and would’ve had to come home early from my first trip if I hadn’t been able to kickstart a freelance writing gig from Bangkok.

That said, on the same trip I also ended up having to buy a new laptop in Delhi—so even laptops can be sourced along the way if need be.

iPhone & charger

No-brainer—Google Maps has saved me so many times I can’t even count them.

Kindle & charger

If you’re a reader like myself (and you should be), a Kindle or some other type of e-reader is an absolute essential.

If you’re traveling for months at a time, you’re likely to go through a lot of books—and though I admit there’s a certain quaint appeal to finding that one special book in a used bookstore, devouring it, and then leaving it at a hostel for the next traveler to find, I view a good book as a permanent possession that should be kept forever for future reference.

If you feel the same way, a good e-reader is a non-negotiable.

Garmin watch & charger (optional)

Again, as a runner, this is not optional for me (how else would I be able to monitor my heart rate zones?)

Flashlight & charger

While it may sound superfluous, a good quality flashlight can actually do wonders in making you feel safe on sketchy night-time streets. I once used the strobe mode on my Olight Warrior 3 to scare off a stray dog that wouldn’t leave me alone on a dirt road in Tanzania at the ripe hour of midnight.

That flashlight is now in the possession of a Maasai man named Meleo in rural Tanzania, so I’ve since replaced it with the Warrior Ultra.

World outlet adapter

If you’re going cross-continents, this is a must.

AirPods

My AirPods Pro with noise cancellation are one of the great pleasures of my life.

Disposable camera (optional)

I had the idea to buy a cheap Kodak disposable camera for my first trip, snapping a single picture during what felt like the most special, memorable moments of the trip.

While it did take up a fair amount of precious backpack space, the thrill of viewing the physical print-outs after my return home made it more than worth it.

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Miscellaneous

Journal & pens

I feel strongly about this one. People love to talk about journaling as a way to stay mentally healthy, but for me, it’s so much more than that.

Journaling allows you to relive the most profound moments of your trip (or your life) over and over again in perfect detail, throughout those later years when memory alone would customarily make a big murky mess of things. I truly cannot explain to you how many times I have, while re-reading old entries I made during my trips, sat back, lost in a resurfaced memory, and said to myself, “Remember that?”

This is tremendously important. It’s not merely good fun. We all have a fixed number of days, weeks, months, or years to live, and remembering your most precious moments through your journals quite literally allows you to extract more value and meaning per unit of time lived.

The non-journaler and I might live the same number of years and even have the same number of amazing experiences—I’ll just get far more out of them than he ever could.

So, bring a journal.

Wallet

Passport

Passport photocopies

These are nice to have in case your hostel or hotel asks for copy, and especially if you lose your passport and need to prove to your home country’s embassy that you actually are who you say you are.

Vitamins

Sunscreen

Towel

This is an area where I’ve found it really does pay to get a “travel towel.” Any light, quick-drying, packable towel should do.

Combination padlocks

Good for when you’re forced to shove your bag into the undercarriage of an overnight bus.

Earplugs & sleep mask

This may be the best $10 you’ll ever spend.

COVID mask

Thank God these have become essentially no longer necessary, but good to have in case.

Ziplock bags

These can of course be purchased anywhere, but they’re immensely helpful for organizing smaller items, such as the pills mentioned in the “First-Aid Supplies” section below.

Emergency contact list

Pray that this will never need to be utilized, but it’s a good precaution to write up a short list of close contacts and keep it in an outside pocket for easy access in case you wind up in a hospital bed in the middle of nowhere.

Toiletries

I’m pretty sure you don’t need any help from me to assemble your toiletries—the below is just standard fare.

One thing I highly recommend is to get a toiletries bag that can double as a medical kit (see the next section). The Aer Dopp Kit 2 is perfect for this, being just roomy enough. I think it’s since been discontinued, but the new-and-improved Dopp Kit 3 should work just as well.

Toothbrush

Toothpaste

Floss

Deodorant

Razor

Nail scissors / clippers

Tweezers

Chapstick

Soap

Shampoo

First-Aid Supplies

Band-aids

Antiseptic towelettes

Alcohol prep pads

Povidone-iodine prep pads

Neosporin

Gauze pads

Gauze roll

Surgical tape

Anti-itch cream

Laxatives

For when you’re blocked up.

Anti-diarrheal tablets

For when you need to be blocked up.

Advil (ibuprofen)

Tylenol (acetaminophen / paracetamol)

If you’re in a tropical area where dengue fever is a risk, this is recommended over ibuprofen.

I said at the beginning that your gear should serve the adventure, and not the other way around. Put another way, the best gear is the gear you never have to think about.

Invest in the pieces that matter, be willing to improvise on the replaceable stuff, and your mind will be wonderfully free to take in this world in all its glory, and to give of yourself in return.

To know, and to be known.

This world has more joys, horrors, wonders and mysteries than could be uncovered in 10,000 lifetimes. I can think of no greater tragedy than for a person to spend their single one engrossed in shallow entertainments that don’t matter.

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The world is exciting:

“Captain Jonathan R. Davis was an American gold rush prospector. On December 19, 1854, he single-handedly killed eleven armed outlaws at Rocky Canyon near Sacramento, California, using two Colt revolvers and a Bowie knife. This episode became one of the deadliest small arms engagements in American history involving one man against multiple foes.”

Jonathan R. Davis, Wikipedia

The world is terrible:

“One day, Bruce left the kitten sleeping in the wooden box in the corner of the cell as he went to visit the hospital, in which animals were not allowed. When he returned, he found several Thais sitting in his cell, smiling. He looked at the wooden box and saw that the kitten was gone. Then he saw it. The kitten was suspended from a piece of string tied to a bolt in the wall. The string had been pulled so tight around the kitten’s neck that its tongue protruded. Its eyes were squeezed shut, as if in pain. Bruce was so devastated he collapsed on the floor of the cell and sobbed. The Thais then cut the kitten down, skinned it and ate it until all that was left was bone.”

The Damage Done, Warren Fellows

The world is wonderful:

I was caught up to the third heaven fourteen years ago. Whether I was in my body or out of my body, I don’t know—only God knows. Yes, only God knows whether I was in my body or outside my body. But I do know that I was caught up to paradise and heard things so astounding that they cannot be expressed in words, things no human is allowed to tell.

The Bible, The Apostle Paul

The world is fascinating:

“Turritopsis dohrnii, also known as the immortal jellyfish, is a species of small, biologically immortal jellyfish found worldwide in temperate to tropic waters. It is one of the few known cases of animals capable of completely reverting to a sexually immature, colonial stage after having reached sexual maturity as a solitary individual… effectively rendering the jellyfish biologically immortal, although in practice individuals can still die.”

Turritopsis dohrnii, Wikipedia

The world is mysterious:

“The text is an inventory of 64 locations; 63 of which are treasures of gold and silver, which have been estimated in the tons. For example, one single location described on the copper scroll describes 900 talents (30 tons) of buried silver. The following English translation of the opening lines of the first column of the Copper Scroll shows the basic structure of each of the entries in the scroll. The structure is 1) general location, 2) specific location, often with distance to dig, and 3) what to find.

1:1 In the ruin that is in the valley of Acor, under
1:2 the steps, with the entrance at the East,
1:3 a distance of forty cubits: a strongbox of silver and its vessels
1:4 with a weight of seventeen talents. KεN^”

Copper Scroll, Wikipedia

The world is powerful:

“Many of the known neutron stars spin at phenomenal rates and blast beams of radiation out into space like cosmic lighthouses. These stars are known as pulsars, and they are truly wonders of the universe. Some known pulsars are approaching twice the mass of our sun, measure only 20 kilometers in diameter, and spin more than five hundred times every second. Imagine the violence of the forces on such an object. We have discovered wonders beyond imagination.”

Why Does E=mc²? (And Why Should We Care?), Brian Cox & Jeff Forshaw

The world is beautiful:

“From the reflection of the sun on the spray or mist which arises from these falls there is a beautiful rainbow produced which adds not a little to the beauty of this majestically grand scenery. After writing this imperfect description I again viewed the falls and was so much disgusted with the imperfect idea which it conveyed of the scene that I determined to draw my pen across it and begin again, but then reflected that I could not perhaps succeed better than penning the first impressions of the mind; I wished for the pencil of Salvator Rosa or the pen of Thompson, that I might be enabled to give to the enlightened world some just idea of this truly magnificent and sublimely grand object, which has from the commencement of time been concealed from the view of civilized man; but this was fruitless and vain.”

The Journals of Lewis and Clark, Meriwether Lewis & William Clark

The world is ugly:

“We arrived at the bus stand. This was far and above the saddest and most miserable section of Delhi I’d ever seen. Pure concrete dust and mud as far as the eye could see made up the “sidewalk,” with broken down buildings just behind the sidewalk. At one point I stepped in a pile of black, nameless mud, and then into the toxic concrete dust; this coated nearly half of my shoe in it. Kids and dogs played in the dust and rubble. It was disgusting and heartbreaking.”

Journal Entry: Trial By Fire In India, Robbie Mizzone

Inspiration is “the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something.”

I think most of us are familiar with the process: You’re in your car listening to a new song from your favorite artist, staring out over the mountains at a breathtaking sunset, or watching a movie you’ve seen 10 times before, when suddenly you’re hit as if by a bus with the urge to act. To do, as the definition above states so blandly, “something.”

In this post, I want to talk about that something.

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I’m often confused by what seems to be the default instinct in people, which is twofold:

1. Pinpoint the creative medium which inspires you most often (music, film, literature, paintings, etc.)

2. Become yourself a creator of that same medium.

And now that I think about it, the optional third step could then be:

3. Feel discouraged and wonder why your fervor peters out after a short period of time, or why your song, short film, or debut novel just isn’t nearly as good as the greats.

I have firsthand experience with this. The most notable example that comes to mind is from late 2020, when I found myself listening to movie soundtracks all the time. I’m not sure if it was the correlation with the events of the movies themselves, or something unknowable in the sweeping movements of the orchestras, but I found myself constantly filled with inspiration—mind wandering far away from the highway I was driving on, heart pounding in my chest, even occasionally tears welling in my eyes. Strongest of all, that unmistakable hallmark of inspiration: the urge to do something.

And just like that, I moved on to step 2. “Nothing moves me quite like these movie scores,” my train of thought went, “so I’ll become a composer.” It felt like a “duh” decision. Isn’t this just what you do?

Long story short, it went great—for about three weeks. I even bought a new Mac and installed Logic Pro, loading it up with a handful of juicy orchestral sampling packs.

But then the fire just… died.

Now, that ceaselessly advocating devil inside me feels the need to say that maybe, just maybe, I was lazy. Maybe I stopped prematurely. Maybe I should’ve kept at it, and I’d be happier now. But I don’t think that’s what was really going on.

I think that in reality, I chose the wrong “something” from my inspiration. I think the music that so moved me then was urging me to complete a different action altogether—one that has absolutely nothing to do with the medium (music) itself.

And when you think about it at the most basic level, this has to be the case to some degree. If every musician in the world made music only because they were inspired by someone else’s music, and that musician had only made their songs because they were inspired by someone else’s (and so on), then there wouldn’t really be any deeper core, or meaning, or reason that anchors the music to reality and makes it worth anything in itself. It would be like a long series of Russian nesting dolls, with nothing but air inside the innermost one.

Thinking about it now, it’s so simple. What did I really feel—what do I feel still—when I listen to a stunning movie score? When I’m laying in bed at night with my AirPods in, what visions dance through my head, and to what far away places does my mind journey?

Do I get visions of Hans Zimmer in his studio, mixing horns for The Lion King or Inception? When my eyes fill with tears, are they tears of envy, of longing to be recognized like he is, and to have works of my own released on streaming platforms to be appreciated by others? No, absolutely not.

When I first had this epiphany around 2022, I sat down and wrote out all the raw thoughts, all the “somethings” I felt compelled to do when I listened to music:

“I want to journey to the other side of the earth. I want to scale a mountain in a different country and scream my lungs out from the summit. I want to fall in love. I want to travel and experience new ways of life. I want to know what it’s like to make eye contact with a stranger as I walk down the street in a small town in France. I want to know what life would be like were I born a Nepalese villager. I want to land a job on the spot, in a place that I’m just passing through. I want to work aboard a ship heading for some other continent, with not a clue as to what I will do once I arrive. I want to live each day not knowing what the next will hold. Not once, not ever, have I really done that. Everything is so meticulously planned out and measured. I want to live a real adventure. To find myself in a new country one night, when I woke up that morning intending to stay in the same place. To celebrate joyously and yet wordlessly with those of another tongue. To live, to learn, to experience. To see if pine trees smell the same in Asia as they do in Speculator, New York. To smell the familiar scent of saltwater and campfire smoke, but on the beach of the European coast instead of on the Jersey Shore. To confront that longing; that deep, wordless cry that I find ever-present within me. To really confront it head on, to satisfy it, to fulfill it. To experience hard times, real hard times. To not have a hot shower ready at the very moment at which I desire it. To know the joy of being hopeless, but then finding hope once again. To be vulnerable. To put trust in others whom you have no reason to trust, and to see them pull through… or not. I want to vividly and truly experience beauty; of nature, people, architecture, or anything and everything else. That is what I feel when I hear moving music.”

1/23/22

I had learned, clearly and definitively, that those creative mediums which most frequently made my heart ache for something, were themselves unrelated to that something, and that my destiny, at least in that period of my life, would be best served somewhere else entirely.

And I made good on it too, writing this from Thailand a few months later:

“After songwriting on the beach, I hitched a ride in one of those pickup truck taxies to the ferry, and started over to Koh Phangan. For the last hour of the ride, I stood on the deck, looking at the surreal ocean, island, sunset scenery, and listening to the very soundtracks that had played such a huge part in inspiring me to go on an adventure in the first place. It was serene, somber, and incredibly powerful.”

10/14/22

Of course, this concept is not at all limited to music-borne inspiration. I’m convinced that the avid reader, the movie nut, the theater connoisseur, and everyone in between often makes the same mistake: trading the calling itself for the vessel that carries it.

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Time for some disclaimers. Now that you know what I’m saying in the above section, I want to make very certain you also know what I’m not saying.

I’m not saying that the urge to be creative is unnatural, and anyone that feels it is mistaken.

It’s undeniable that we humans have an instinctual urge to create. It’s the most natural thing in the world. It comes out of us like water. There’s an unbroken line throughout history of people just constantly making better and better stuff as time goes on. I might even go so far as to say that creating should be the ultimate goal, the final, highest calling, of everyone on earth.

I’m also not saying everyone should shirk the mantle of productivity and spend the best years of their lives chasing down every random whim of the heart the moment it arrives.

But I do feel that one of the most common causes of this mistaken inspiration is the obsessive American desire for productivity—the gauging of a man’s worth only by the castle he’s built and not the seeds he’s planted.

The key is to realize that the creative process itself is at its best when it has as its backing a whole host of years spent learning, adventuring, and experiencing life itself, with all its terrific highs and horrific lows—for this is what will give your creations real value.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, perhaps the greatest novelist ever to exist, was once sentenced to death by firing squad for anti-government activities. He literally watched the group before him get gunned down, then donned a white cloak, kissed a cross, and just as the rifles aimed at his own back and prepared to fire, the execution was called off.

Afterwards, he wrote the following:

"When I look back on my past and think how much time I wasted on nothing, how much time has been lost in futilities, errors, laziness, incapacity to live; how little I appreciated it, how many times I sinned against my heart and soul – then my heart bleeds. Life is a gift, life is happiness, every minute can be an eternity of happiness!”

It’s no coincidence that Dostoevsky’s greatest works, The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, and Notes from Underground, were all written after he’d had this harrowing experience—and undoubtedly countless other experiences of the same vivid intensity, whether wonderful, horrible, or everything in between—for by this point, he had lived—really lived—and having really lived, could create works of stunning brilliance. This is what I desire for myself—and for you, dear reader.

So, what should we do when inspiration hits? I propose a new two-step process:

1. Allow yourself to feel without the mad rush to be productive. Ascertain where that ache in your chest really comes from, and what you must do to quell it.

2. No matter how idealistic, romantic, or childish it may seem, go do it.

Many of us adults, juggling such things as rent payments and doctors appointments, often find ourselves wishing we could go back to the simplicity of childhood. I know I certainly do.

I’ll think back to those wide open summer days, where I’d return home after a little league baseball game (I was a vicious shortstop), change into a pair of shorts (and nothing else), and spend the day out in the sun, roaming with my brothers through my family’s three acres of backyard or the endless adjacent forest. And once that started to lose its luster for the day, I’d head back inside and, after spending a few solid moments brainstorming, sigh in resignation and settle down to read Harry Potter with a bowl of ice cream in front of me.

What made those days so special? Why do I pause in the middle of researching fines for overdue toll violations and travel back through the years, longing to inhabit those moments once again?

I’ve got some theories on that—but I’ve also got some theories on why most of us, if given that choice by an all-powerful genie, wouldn’t actually take him up on the offer.

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Many people will assert that as we get older—as our brains mature and we start taking on more responsibility—the world grows darker. We start experiencing depression and discontent, or even a sense of meaninglessness and nihilism. This is undoubtedly true, and I didn’t write this post to poetically disprove this. Instead, I wrote it to show that, while it’s all true, it’s decidedly (and happily) not the whole story.

To illustrate this, take a moment and think back to the last time you experienced a strong positive emotion. It could be gratitude, wonder, excitement—anything that was strong and positive. I’ll do it too.

What did you come up with? Mine was a short moment of deep appreciation and love toward my mother, spurred by an old family picture I recently saw. It wasn’t anything transcendent, but for a few seconds I just considered her and loved her, and dwelled on the sacrifices she’s made—the trips, friends, hobbies, and fun she missed out on—all for the sake of her children’s happiness and betterment.

(As a side note, she would tell you it wasn’t a sacrifice at all, and that she wouldn’t trade a single moment of motherhood for the whole world. That’s fascinating in its own right, and I believe her wholeheartedly—but that’s a conversation for another time).

This little moment of remembrance was simply the last time I felt a strong positive emotion. If I’m allowed to think back even through just the past month, I could come up with many other instances of even more powerful, longer-lasting moments and experiences of the same nature.

Did you have thoughts like this as a child? When you were 11 years old, salivating at the thought of indulging your 30 minutes of video game time when you got home from school, did you ever sit and consider all the clothes and dinners and jewelry your parents wanted to buy for themselves, but never did because they’d committed to putting aside 15% of everything they made in order to build up your college fund? Or did you ever hold long conversations with your brother, after your fifth fistfight in as many days, about how you really appreciate each other for laying the foundation of conflict resolution and social skills that will end up saving many of your friendships down the road?

Obviously, you didn’t do any of these things. But forget about whether you did them or not—could you have done them, even if you really wanted to? Just turn the clock back far enough, and the answer eventually becomes a resounding no.

Growing up is a double-edged sword. You’re confronted with immense darkness in the world, and some genuine happiness is permanently lost. If you sometimes long for childhood again, you’re right to. But to remain in that innocent, beautiful state of youth forever is the only thing that would be more tragic than growing out of it.

As I put it in a song I wrote on this topic:

I was 17 when it hit me
One day I’m really going to die

But also,

17 when I fell in love for the first time

The thing that puts the pain
In broken promises
Is the same thing that puts the magic in a first kiss

And let’s not cap it at a first kiss. Life—adult life—is a glittering mosaic that can be considered and appreciated and wondered at from endless angles:

• Intensely loving and being loved by a romantic partner, and pouring out your souls to one another;

• Cruising down a country road at the wheel of a fast car, with the windows down;

• Feeling a real sense of sadness—and guilt, and shame at your own good fortune—as you fly across the world and see firsthand the poverty which is the norm for more than 80% of the world’s population;

• Recovering, learning, and bettering yourself in the aftermath of a tragic breakup or divorce;

• Uncertainly leaning into the weight of responsibility that comes with starting a family, and finding that you thrive in it;

• Silently, gravely resolving to give your life to save those you love should the time come, and appreciating the sacrifices of those who’ve already done so—soldiers, martyrs, parents—with the most profound solemnity;

• Forming a professional identity around a passion project, and devoting yourself to it tirelessly until it comes to fruition.

If you’re an adult reading this, you know that children can’t conceive of these things—at least not remotely at the same depth that you can. The spectrum of all possible experiences grows as you do. The bad things get worse, but the good things also get better.

So if you were approached by an all-powerful genie, I’m sure you’d come up with more than just a handful of urgent wishes—but I don’t think you’d seriously consider wishing to become a kid again, living like Peter Pan for eternity.

Why? You know deep down, like I do, that as nice as that would be, you’d be missing out.

As a side note, it’s important to point out that this idea of missing out on the deeper experiences only applies to us adults. For a young child, missing out is the point. A pure, innocent, adventurous childhood is the greatest gift a person can be given, since it’s the very thing that makes possible a healthy adulthood.

In fact, I think the only reason I’ve been able to come to grips with growing up, and combat the many horrors of this world with the even greater number of its unfathomable beauties, is because I was blessed enough to have parents who gave me just such a childhood.

As you look toward having children of your own—or if you’ve already done so—give them the gift of innocence that my parents gave to me.

Almost nothing matters more than this.

“Solo travel is actually the most social way to travel.”

In backpacker circles, this is a well-known little saying, the idea being that those who travel in groups, say, of 2-3 of their close friends, are much less likely to get out of their comfort zones and make new friends along the way. They’ll remain safe within their little clique, drawing upon the doubtless plentiful reserves of inside jokes and one-liners, and viewing all new experiences from inside that comfortable little room, looking through a single narrow window to the outside world.

As a long-time solo traveler myself, I can attest to the truth of this. After a mere handful of days on the road, the truly solo traveler will be looking for friends in earnest. The good news is, he won’t have to look far. Every traveler’s hostel within any remotely civilized area will be teeming with people exactly like him: solo travelers searching for new friends.

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I’ve truly never experienced an environment in which it’s easier to walk up to someone—or be walked up to yourself—and just begin a new friendship. I’ve also never experienced friendships which accelerate so fast. When you’re living the backpacker life with others, you can afford to spend every moment of every day together. The shared memories between you rack up shockingly fast, and after a mere two weeks, you’re dreading the fact that your new little family will someday inevitably have to separate—and tears can often accompany the parting moments.

But even this is only part of the story—because everywhere you travel, people live. For every one fellow traveler who you’ll come to know, there are 100 locals who would love nothing more than to invite you into their homes for dinner, give you a free crash course on their cultures and traditions over some hot beverage, and genuinely get to know you as a person.

And so to the truly lonely person, the person who feels like no one sees them and no one would care even if they did—and yet has never left their hometown, their state, or their country—to you, I say this:

You don’t have no friends—you’re just not where the friends are.

Here are mine (straight from my phone contacts).

Michael (Koh Chang)

Gajendra (Jaipur Guy)

Abubakari (Forodhani)

Edison (Goodwill)

Elias (Scorpion Restaurant)

Freddy (Hospital)

Naomi (Church)

James (New Star)

Daniel (Vodacom)

Emanuel (Second Number)

Chris (Farmboy)

Robert (Arusha Tour Guide)

Silvie Li

Armelle

Dorcas (Salma’s Neighbor)

Emanuel (Lendikinya)

Khamis (Bicycle)

Goodluck (Vipaji)

Meghan Jackson

Bimsara

James (Motorbike)

Victor (Safari)

Linus (Church)

Ferry Girl

Darshana

Mika

Tondiye

Catherine

Beatrice Kuboja

Steven (Motorbike)

Veronica (Tiles)

Damaris (Preacher Bus Lady)

Chandana (Rotti Hut Hiriketiya)

Adam (Lendikinya)

Onesmo

Neo (Wheelchair Doctor)

Noel (Arusha)

Theo

Waralee Kannika

Varian

Elias Majogoro (Guitar)

Solomon

Sabbath

Jimmy (Kima)

Esther (Salma’s Neighbor)

Jule Sri Lanka

Damian (Chicken)

Lightness

Zia

Deborah (Rivertrees)

Nanyaro (Mzungu Safari Lodge)

Bus Kid

Daniel (School)

Chathu

Dennis (Maasai Guy)

Jackson’s Mom

Mohend

Liam Carville

North Valley Hospital

Mukesh (Ayurvedic Healer)

Dineshka (Abinu’s Place)

Indika

Asi (Mond)

Boaz Maili

Cabinet Person (TZ)

Blue Suit Guy

Salma (2nd Number)

Michael (Teacher)

Afline

Valence Lyimo

Qaim

Lucky (Tuk Tuk)

Bjarne

John Migire

Elizabeth (TZ)

Viraj (Abinu Maid)

Srinath Hewage Srilanka

Geeth

Tubulu (Rivertrees Security)

Goodluck (Arusha)

Boaz (Bismarck Tour)

Hans Mato

Eliah (Motorbike Poland)

Omar (Rasta)

Chandrika

Edgar (Usa)

Moses (Abinu’s Place)

Steven (Laundry Motorbike)

William (Serengeti Hotel)

Father John Kwa

Samwell (TZ Videographer)

Lameck (Church)

Harsh Kumar (Kalpa Adventure Guy)

Eve

Léa Cartier

Glory (Fahrodhani)

Zachaeus (Church)

Mwai The Son

Edson

Fundi

Sarah (Greens Nungwi)

Kishor (Nuwar Eliya Tuk Tuk)

Saroj Ramya Kumara (Motorbike Hiriketiya)

Asha (Ngorongoro Hotel)

Doreen Parents (School)

Solomon Godfrey

Laki🤙

Hyde

Besty

Amigo

Seuri Karisian (Lendikinya) (Second Number)

Raymond Julius

Jonny (Rivertrees Motorbike)

Tiny Boss

Hanumanth Negi

Dao

David Hekima

Sashi (Rotti Hut Hiriketiya)

Mark (Tanzania)

Nanah

Raju (Rock View Host, Ella)

Fredrick (Hospital)

Waieem (Jaipur Driver)

Eric (Usa Restaurant)

Paul Hummel

Iain

Lashley’s Mom

Alan (Arusha Market)

Elias (Scorpion Restaurant) (Second Number)

Gustavo (Rivertrees)

Hilda🦦🫶🏽

Mathatitu

Collins

Salma Mohamedi

Neema (Maasai Celebration)

Godleader Ayubu

Paul Devereux

Toby (Videographer)

Fiona Hiri

Jackson’s Dad

Victor (Motorbike)

Sharo’s Music

Namet PLNP Tour Guide

Lilian

Hasitha

Touy (phiamous)

Joshua Kuboja

Samson (Church)

Ally Jailo

Daniel (Church)

Hello

Samwel’s Father

So you see, I wasn’t lying.

The journal entry that inspired this post:

I woke up this morning eaten up by more bed begs, then ate breakfast at the place near Leaf Guest House where I ordered dinner last night. I played guitar and sang for them and talked to them. One of the owners had an amputated arm from a train accident where his backpack got snagged on a lamppost while he was riding in the train. Terrifying.

Then I took the bus to Nuwara Eliya and checked in to this hostel. The people in Sri Lanka are so unbelievably friendly. I cannot even count the WhatsApp numbers I’ve saved and the amount of genuine, well-meaning people who went out of their ways to help me find the right bus stop, guesthouse, etc. It’s unbelievable.

3/1/23

“Last night was a remarkable night. Outside the bus station in Bangkok, I met a girl from Turkey. She’s a 26 year-old teacher and musician who lives now in Thailand, and was on her way to Koh Phangan to relax for 10 days. She talked a lot, about a lot of different things, and at first I was skeptical, wondering if I shouldn’t have talked to her in the first place. But, as we sat together on the bus, our bodies touching gently under our warm blankets, my mind began to change.”

10/13/22

I’d been in Bangkok for only about five days—still a complete, clueless backpacking novice—when I decided it was time to go south, down toward to the islands of Thailand. Don’t get me wrong, Bangkok has its charms—but when you Google “Thailand,” or when you purchase the Lonely Planet guidebook, you’re confronted mostly with pictures of white sand beaches and ocean water so blue you assume the photos must be edited. So naturally, I wanted to see what that was all about.

I purchased a ticket on an overnight bus down to Surat Thani, and around 7:00 p.m., took a tuk-tuk to the bus station. It didn’t look anything like a traditional bus station, though—it was basically just another door in a long, conjoined strip of business buildings, with a very small sign over the entrance. The crowd of other Western folk wearing backpacks was the only thing that really assured me I was in the right place at all.

After checking in and confirming my ticket, I headed back outside to wait. It was a hot, sticky night (which isn’t really all that notable if you’re familiar with Bangkok), and I distinctly remember the orangey streetlights that illuminated everything in a warm glow. I put my backpack down to the relief of my shoulders, and happened to look back toward the door just as a girl was coming out—so I saw her before she saw me. In that brief snapshot in time, she was just another random traveler, and I had not the slightest idea of just how much she would change things for me.

She was of average height, with dark brown hair and a beautiful, elegant face. She looked up as she walked out of the station, saw me, and immediately said hello—I’m not exactly sure why she chose me, though I won’t pretend I haven’t flattered myself with theories.

I don’t remember too much about our interactions on the street, so I won’t make something up just for the sake of it. I am sure we went through the typical list of backpacker questions, which occur so regularly and consistently they may as well be numbered:

1. What’s your name?

2. Where are you from?

3. How long have you been traveling for?

I won’t reveal her name, but I learned she was from Turkey and that she lived permanently in Thailand. She was on the way south on my same bus to the island region for a 10-day vacation. I was heading to the island of Koh Samui, and she to the neighboring island of Koh Phangan.

Eventually, the bus rolled in. We walked on, and I remember her saying, “Do you want to sit together?” I, of course, said yes. We wedged our bags into the overhead spaces, and I took a final trip to the on-bus toilet (which, if I remember correctly, smelled such that it would ruin the mood of this story if I elaborated on it).

The bus was pumping with AC and the seats were close together, and so I remember that as we sat down and covered ourselves with the complementary blankets, her leg and shoulder pressed up against mine, warming me. I think that was when I first started to feel a special sort of connection to her—and not merely a physical one, but something much deeper, borne of her extraordinary openness and sincerity, of which I was about to learn.

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As the night wore on and the explicitly Thai mix of dark green foliage and mangled telephone cables flew by outside, we got to know one another.

“We talked about everything from food, to pets, to movies, to religion and spiritual experiences. She even teared up a few times, telling me about how she feels unloved, abandoned, and sometimes just very, very sad. I went from being skeptical, to finding myself caught in a strange mix of pitying her, loving her, and being genuinely fascinated by her.”

10/13/22

There were a few moments in the middle of the night where I would wake up from a short doze, and genuinely struggle to remember where I was. I would feel her warm body next to mine, behold her sleeping face, feel the rhythm of the bus beneath me as the driver plowed on through the night, and I would just empty my mind of thoughts, taking in only the present moment and trying as best as I could to cement everything into memory.

I think it was the twofold potion of falling asleep beside her and listening to her speak for hours with a depth usually reserved for close friends, that, by the next morning, had me feeling like I knew her deeply. And even as I write this now, I wonder if that was merely a feeling, or if it was actually true. Do you always need more than one night to get to know a person in all their fullness?

We said goodbye on the street outside with galling brevity. She boarded a taxi, while I sat and waited for mine.

“Now I’m on the ferry heading to Koh Samui, and she’s gone, on the way to Koh Phangan. I feel a deep emptiness now that I’m alone—I don’t know if it was as much her specifically as it was just the long-forgotten experience of becoming close with a woman. Before I met her, it would’ve been utterly impossible to explain the ache that I now feel, from the deepest part of my heart.

I’m not sure there is any fulfillment as intense and beautiful and meaningful as that which comes from the companionship of a man with a woman. Whatever this is, it’s surely from the soul, or from the heart—from whatever part of a human is capable of holding real truth and love. The thought of continuing this journey solo now seems unutterably lonely.”

10/13/22

“I’m writing this now a few hours later from Chaweng Beach, where I just briefly fell asleep. The beach is nice, but not that nice. Koh Samui is definitely not what I’d hoped it would be—there’s very little quaintness to it, and the main roads are big highways. I know I should probably give it more time, but I think I’m going to head over to Koh Phangan tomorrow.”

10/13/22

Even still, I wondered how much of this newfound disdain for Koh Samui was simply due to the fact that it was someplace other than where she was.

The next day, I wrote:

“This morning, after spending some time on the beach, I hitched a ride in one of those pickup truck taxis to the ferry, and started over to Koh Phangan.

For the last hour of the ride, I stood on the deck, looking at the surreal ocean, island, and sunset scenery, listening to the very soundtracks that had played such a huge part in inspiring me to go on this adventure in the first place. It was serene, somber, and incredibly powerful.

Even still, I can’t stop thinking about her, and the way I felt falling asleep next to her on the bus. After last night, it’s like there’s such a void in my trip and in my life.”

10/14/22

The best way I can describe it is that continuing such an adventure alone, without someone like her to share it with, felt pointless—as if the meaning and purpose had been stripped clean out, and the whole thing was now just a sad “going-through-the-motions,” like the guy who goes on his honeymoon trip anyway after his fiancée broke off their engagement. I also just couldn’t shake this romantic feeling of possibility—of fate and destiny—as the ferry drew nearer and nearer to Koh Phangan, nearer and nearer to where she was.

The dictionary defines a soulmate as “a close friend or romantic partner with whom one has a unique deep connection based on mutual understanding and acceptance.”

Most people assume the concept of a soulmate is nonsense—probably because most people can never seem to find one. And yet, as all the great stories and movies attest, that doesn’t mean there isn’t one for you. In fact, the great romantic fear of a thousand classic novels is that you might miss your soulmate. You might pass them by unaware, and end up married to another.

But my overnight bus ride with that Turkish girl made me wonder if perhaps those authors of antiquity got something wrong.

Because the one thing missing from the above definition of “soulmate” is the concept of time. There’s just no mention of it, no statement that this person has to—or even should—be with you forever.

Your soulmate could be the girl who drops her keys on the rainy sidewalk in front of you, and looks oddly deep into your eyes as you hand them back to her.

Your soulmate could be the man who approached your table at the café to tell you you’re beautiful, and ended up inspiring you to stick it out just one more day trying to be a singer.

Or, your soulmate could be the woman next to you on an overnight bus through Thailand, who pours out her soul to you in the tiny, 12-hour window of one long night, only for you to never see her or speak to her again.

And what I’m getting at is maybe—just maybe—that’s not always a shame. Maybe, for you, it was meant to be like that. Maybe a soulmate isn’t always a forever thing. Maybe just their memory is potent enough—and when you look back in 20 or 30 or 50 years, you’ll find that your encounter with your soulmate, however fleeting, was the very thing that caused you to make that one right decision, which led you down all the right paths, and culminated in a life more beautiful than you thought possible.

But at this point, I’m sure you, dear reader, just want me to stop rambling and get back to the story. Did I ever make it to Koh Phangan and reunite with this ravishing mystery woman?

I’ll save that for a later date.

I’m often told I’m “good at talking to people.” That I have a gift for making others feel comfortable and being able to relate with them.

I’ll skip the false modesty and say that I agree—I am good at that. But I think this has much less to do with any innate qualities I possess, and much more to do with the wide variety of adventures and careers I’ve allowed myself to embark upon.

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I recently helped out at a “feed the homeless” church breakfast event. About 15 of us showed up from my church, but only 10 were needed to actually run the buffet line and load up the plates—leaving me and a few others with the sole duty of being friends with these people.

The first person I spoke to was an old Asian lady. She wore a little pink cap, was probably close to 90 years old, and barely spoke English. But within seconds of me asking where she was from (I think it was China or South Korea) we had found common ground, as I’ve spent significant time in Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia, and for a while now have really wanted to visit both China and South Korea.

The second person I talked to was a shorter gentleman, who, sadly, had the look of past drug abuse about him. His conversational skills were fantastic though, and within minutes of getting to know him, we were chopping it up about drywall installation and all the little nuances that go along with it. He used to have a union job, very similar to the construction job I held for months to save up for my first backpacking trip.

Finally, I spoke for a long time with a hilarious, spunky old lady, who, with a totally straight face, politely requested we bring caviar for the next breakfast event. Somehow we ended up discussing the hygiene habits of people in various foreign countries—another thing I have intimate experience with. She also admonished me never to go to Hoag hospital.

This all got me thinking: I wouldn’t have been able to have such rich, meaningful, and widely varying conversations with these people if I hadn’t lived such a rich, meaningful, and widely varied life.

I actually do have a pretty crazy life story so far. From being a professional musician at age 12, to becoming a corporate accountant at age 20 only to quit and work at a ranch in Wyoming, to then working the aforementioned construction job for a few months to save up for my nine-month solo backpacking trip (during which I started a freelance writing gig and became a good runner), to moving to Africa for four months to volunteer at a nonprofit, to then moving back home, starting up again with a finance job, and most recently, growing this blog.

I say all this not to brag. None of the things I mentioned above are even that hard to do, besides maybe the musician part. No, I say it to bring home the point, which is this:

Do stuff. Lots of it.

Let your mind wander.

Feel that ache in your chest, and actually listen to it.

Read that book, go down that rabbit hole, travel to that country.

Live an interesting life.

Allow yourself to know and to be known.

Not only will it make you a better person—it will make you a better friend.

After months of long morning commutes to work, you finally finished listening to the audiobook of East of Eden by John Steinbeck. A few days later, your coworker tells you East of Eden is his favorite book, and asks if you’ve read it. Can you say “yes” without being a liar?

My very strong opinion is that you can—but after asking this question to my own coworkers and friends, it appears the world is pretty divided on this one, and strong emotions usually manifest themselves within minutes of beginning the discussion.

This post seeks to end the debate once and for all (it won’t).

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There are two levels on which we can analyze this question: the technical level and the ordinary level.

The Technical Level

I will concede right off the bat that on the technical level, the answer is no—you cannot say you’ve read a book if you’ve only listened to the audiobook. After all, the textbook definition of the verb “read” is: "look at and comprehend the meaning of (written or printed matter) by mentally interpreting the characters or symbols of which it is composed.” Obviously, if you’re listening to an audiobook, there’s no “written or printed matter” in sight, and so you’re not technically reading.

The Ordinary Level

But none of that actually matters at all, because the important thing to consider here is what is actually being asked by the question, “Hey, have you read X book?” The asker of this question clearly is not after the truth of whether your eyes did the work of moving back and forth to scan the right amount of symbols. They want to know if you’ve absorbed the same story or the same information that they did when they read the book.

In other words:

• “Can we discuss this story?”

• “Oh cool, so you get it!”

• “Could you believe when so-and-so died?”

Once you see this point, the answer becomes a resounding yes—you can say you’ve read a book if you’ve only listened to the audiobook, and you would not be lying.

Below are a few passive-aggressive examples to bolster my argument and weed out some common critiques before they get a chance to stick.

Example #1

Imagine you took a weekend trip to visit your out-of-state family. On Monday, your coworker asks how you got there. “Did you fly?” he asks. The Spirit boarding pass that’s still crumpled up in your jacket pocket clearly indicates you didn’t drive—but think carefully before you answer. After all, if you say yes, that would be a lie, because you didn’t actually fly—you stood on the floor of a metal aircraft, which was itself doing the real flying.

But to answer no here would be patently absurd, and we all know it. Again, it comes down to the same key consideration: What is the asker of the question really after? In this case, they want to know if you drove your car or if you took a plane, and to heck with technicalities. Here, just like in the audiobook example, you should answer the implicit question they’re actually asking, making “yes” the correct answer.

Example #2

You just started year 4 of college, and you’re going through the prerequisites for Advanced Cognitive Psychology class. There, written in bold font, are the words, “Student must have read Cognitive Psychology and Its Implications by John R. Anderson…” followed by a whole host of other gripping psychology tales. Here’s the problem: You didn’t actually read that book with your eyes, but by some glorious twist of fate, you listened to the audiobook in high school.

Can you still enroll in this class? If you’re a “listening to an audiobook doesn’t count as reading” person, you have to admit that enrolling in this class anyway is dishonest behavior. But again, that’s absurd! In this academic example, it’s so clear that what’s actually required for the class is simply a familiarity with the concepts in Cognitive Psychology and Its Implications, regardless of the method of intake. In fact, to be a stickler and say you’re not qualified for the class because you haven’t technically “read” the book, actually seems more dishonest.

Conclusion

This post is so short, and my point so obviously correct, that I don’t really have much to say in summary, besides just a final message to anyone who still thinks listening does not count as reading:

Come on, man.

What follows is a real journal entry I wrote in May 2023 during my first backpacking trip, when my time in Sri Lanka was coming to a close and I was preparing to head to India. The entry has been edited only here and there for clarity and grammar mistakes.

Though the frequent negative words like “miserable” were used with genuine intent at the time of writing the entry, it is precisely events like the ones recounted below that give me such a profound love of, and (ironically) homesickness for, the backpacking life, as well as the countless local Sri Lankan and Indian people who assisted me, genuinely cared about me, and, by proxy, loved me during this stressful period.

The moment I arrived at the Colombo airport, everything that could possibly go wrong, started to go wrong. And it continued to go wrong up until just yesterday.

I was through security at the Colombo airport when I realized that my e-visa for India hadn’t yet been approved. No worries, I thought, I’ll just get to India and wait in the airport until the visa gets approved, then go through immigration. Not so; I was physically unable to get on the plane, as Sri Lanka emigration needed to see my Indian visa before they’d let me board the plane.

So I waited and waited, but ended up missing my flight, because the visa wasn’t approved in time. I figured I’d just have to aimlessly wait in Negombo (the nearest city) until the visa was approved, and then hastily book a new flight. The only really stressful thing was that my Sri Lanka visa ended the next day—so the Indian visa needed to be approved by then, otherwise I’d be overstaying in Sri Lanka.

I figured I would do some work, so I went to a little restaurant, ordered an egg and cheese kottu, and started writing. Then out of nowhere, after never having had a single problem, my laptop screen started uncontrollably flickering and these gross corrupted horizontal and vertical bars appeared. I tried to keep working, but it became impossible.

At this point I started to get a little nervous. If my laptop went out, I’d have no way to make income, which could put me, at the very least, in an inconvenient spot. I had virtually zero money in my checking account, and almost no cash.

A visit to a tech repair shop nearby was fruitless, so I went to an ATM, took out the last of my money, and caught a tuk-tuk to a small guesthouse near to the airport. The lady told me not to keep my bags near the window, in case someone on the road saw my stuff through the window and wanted to steal it. That whole night was miserable and restless, but finally, after checking and checking and checking, my Indian visa was approved at around 8:00 am.

I hurriedly booked a new flight for 2:00 pm that day, got a ride to the airport, and had yet another hiccup with my visa: these two ladies at the check-in counter noticed a problem with the text on the e-visa PDF, and spent five or ten minutes talking together before telling me everything was okay. I finally went through emigration and made it onto the flight. Here I should note that my Indian e-visa was for 180 days; this will become important as the story progresses.

I arrived in Chennai for my connecting flight, made it through immigration, went back into the airport at the domestic terminal, and boarded the final leg to New Delhi. Keep in mind that at this point I was relieved, but still very stressed about my laptop, work, and money.

Immediately upon arriving in New Delhi, disaster struck. I couldn’t purchase a SIM card in the airport, so I told the guy at the taxi booth to just take me to a place in the city with a lot of cheap guesthouses. He told me to go to Paharganj—so we went to Paharganj, which was just utter madness (more on this in a bit).

I exited the taxi at a convenience store with an Airtel sign, asked the man at the stand if he did indeed have SIM cards, and as he nodded yes I reached for my phone in my pocket, only to feel the dreaded softness of my pants and leg only. No phone. I turned around and literally watched the taillights of my taxi disappear into the madness of Paharganj.

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After everything with my low checking account and my computer malfunctioning, now I started to get somewhat seriously panicked. This was crazy. Was the universe saying I shouldn’t be in India?

I asked the guy at the SIM card place to use his phone to try and call the airport taxi booth. His friend let me check Google Maps, but I couldn’t find it. They told me to check with the police, and I did, but they were useless. The police officer did suggest I just go back to the airport, which is what I did.

The taxi driver I found to take me back there wanted to charge me 1,200 INR, which is over double the standard rate. By refusing to engage in his inflated offers and walking away, I got him down to 600, and we left. The driver had a hard time finding the domestic arrivals terminal at the airport, but finally he did.

The guy at the airport taxi booth was amazingly helpful. He remembered me and really cared about helping me. He gave me the taxi number and told me to watch for the taxi to return. Eventually, my original taxi driver himself came up to me, grinning ear to ear, and handed me my phone. I was so grateful I could have cried, and wanted to hug him.

I took another taxi back to Paharganj. It was a cesspool of garbage, poor people, loud people, tuk-tuks, cars, and horns—my goodness, the sound of all the honking horns. It felt really unsafe at some points, and I actually walked out of a guesthouse at one point when I was asked for my passport, because I just felt uneasy about it—something I’d never done before. I met a guy at a travel agency who said he could get me a good room for 800 INR, so I accepted.

We walked through a maze of tiny, rat-infested, garbage-covered streets. People were everywhere. It seems that no matter where you go in New Delhi, people are everywhere. Some men were just ceaselessly carrying construction junk in baskets on their heads, out of a nearby site. I can’t even imagine how little they were paid for their labor.

We finally got the guesthouse, and I checked into a room on the ground floor. I believe it was as I checked in here that I realized that the idiot immigration officer at the Chennai airport had stamped my passport with a 30-day tourist visa, even though my e-visa (which I showed him!) said I had 180 days. I was seriously annoyed—it was just one thing after another in this place. Now when I tried to leave on June 26th, it would look like I was overstaying my visa, even though I wasn’t. This needed to be taken care of as soon as possible, so I could just enjoy my time in India.

I went my room, pooped, wiped with my left hand because there was nothing else to use, showered, and went to bed. I still didn’t have a SIM card (which meant no cell service), I needed to fix my laptop, I needed to figure out how to extend my visa stamp, and I needed to get money out of an ATM (I literally had only 20 INR, which is $0.25, left at this point in cash). But I felt relieved, because I really had avoided disaster with my phone.

The next day I went to an ATM, got money, then went to a SIM card booth. It took an hour to set up my SIM card, and get this: because my visa stamp said I had to leave by June 19th, the guy legally was not allowed to extend my service period beyond that point. So now on June 19th, unless I could get a new stamp, I would have no cell coverage.

I checked out of my hotel, ate, and took a taxi to the New Delhi Field Office (the American Embassy). I didn’t know where else to go. They in turn told me to go to the FRRO office, so I went there. After waiting in a miserable room for my number to be called, the crabby guy at the desk had to admit that the immigration officer had made a mistake, and told me to go to the “F sector” or something like that.

I found the F sector, and I was told to email my problem to them (the office I was literally standing in) as that was standard procedure. I insisted on talking to someone that day though, and eventually talked to the manager, who looked Chinese for some reason. He told me his boss wasn’t there, and so I couldn’t get a physical stamp today, but he assured me I would get an email that said the FRRO acknowledges the mistake, and I could come to Delhi on June 25th or 26th and get a corrected stamp. I didn’t like it, but there was nothing else I could do. I absolutely despise these government places.

Then I went to the Apple Store in Saket, and decided to just buy a new MacBook Air. Everything went great with that, and I left with both laptops, intending to sell the old one. An Apple Store employee had recommended I try Cashify, so I took a taxi there. Of course, once I arrived I was told that, for some reason, only phones could be sold in-store—laptops had to be sold online. I was not even surprised at that point—I just thought, of course.

The employees at Cashify told me to try Nehru Market—and oh boy, I was not prepared for this place.

Imagine two very wide streets, enclosed on either side by huge, rundown buildings that stretched nearly as far as the eye could see. Shop after shop after shop in these buildings were laptop and phone repair and maintenance shops. You go inside one and there’d be old MacBooks stacked on shelves, motherboards laying around on dusty desks, and technicians working in horribly crowded spaces.

I literally just went down the line, into shop after shop, showing my computer and trying to get the best price. Some people offered only 6,000 INR (around $70) and one guy offered 15,000, which I foolishly turned down.

After close to an hour of trying, I found one shop where the guys seemed interested. I followed one employee from that store as he took my laptop to another store and had a different technician look at it, came back to the original store, then turned around and brought it back to the same technician again to check something else. Finally, after numerous tests, after them offering 15,000 and me accepting only for them to then rescind the offer, I threatened to just leave.

They finally agreed to 15,000 INR ($180) and told me to go to a print shop to get a photocopy of my passport and the original laptop bill from Best Buy, which I’d pulled up from my old emails.

I was incredibly stressed at the print shop, because I’d foolishly left my backpack (with my new MacBook!), my guitar, and my old MacBook at the laptop store, and I was worried they’d steal it. The guy at the print shop charged me 10 INR for the printing, and when I told him I only had a 500 INR bill, he said he didn’t have change. I literally looked right down into his change drawer and said something like, “Really? Can you just give me 400 back?” Once he actually began looking though his change, it turned out he did have 490.

He gave this to me and I left, breathing a sigh of relief upon seeing my stuff still in the laptop store. I wrote my own ghetto contract under the employee’s dictation, signed it, collected my money, and got the heck out of there.

From there, I took a miserable 1.5 hour tuk-tuk ride to the Laxmi Holidays bus stand, where I’d booked a night bus to Shimla. I’d breathed in so much dust and exhaust during this day, and so much of it had settled on my skin (and I’d sweated so much in the 110-degree heat), that if I just ran my nails across my arm, they came up caked with black stuff.

We arrived at the bus stand. This was far and above the saddest and most miserable section of Delhi I’d ever seen. Pure concrete dust and mud as far as the eye could see made up the “sidewalk,” with broken down buildings just behind the sidewalk. At one point I stepped in a pile of black, nameless mud, and then into the toxic concrete dust; this coated nearly half of my shoe in it. Kids and dogs played in the dust and rubble. It was disgusting and heartbreaking.

Finally the bus left, and I arrived in Shimla the next morning. Shimla was literally a different world, with beautiful mountains and trees everywhere. I spent the day working and taking care of logistical problems at a beautiful little restaurant called Café 103. I believe it was then that I received an email from the Delhi FRRO that said:

“After checking your documents it has been found that you arrived in India via Chennai airport. Hence, the said correction would be made only at Chennai Airport. You may please contact FRRO Chennai for further necessary action.”

Annoyed? Majorly. Surprised? Nope! I’m currently in a massive email battle with them, and I absolutely refuse to pay an overstay fine at the airport if I’m given one. I will also probably go back to the FRRO in Delhi on June 25th and make a massive stink there until I get a new stamp.

After working at Café 103, I showered with a bucket and cold water in a bathroom at the bus terminal, and then boarded the HRTC bus to Reckong Peo, which is right next to Kalpa, my ultimate destination.

The bus ride was miserable. We were packed in like sardines, and it was impossible to sleep, not because the seat was uncomfortable (which it was), but because the roads were so curvy and the guy drove so fast, that unless I held onto the handle on the back of the seat in front of me, I would slide out of my seat and onto the ground. As we started the trip though, I had some music playing in my AirPods, and I was taken aback as rain started pouring and huge streaks of lightning flashed in the dark sky above the mountains. For a few moments I had real goosebumps at the sheer power of nature.

We arrived in Reckong Peo at 4:15 am, and it was absolutely surreal. I got out of the bus, began the 20-minute walk to my hostel to the noise of howling dogs, and just gazed at the immensity of the mountains, which were covered in snow and ever-so-slightly illuminated by the imminent sunrise. At one point I just closed my eyes and basked in the silence. After New Delhi, this was magical. I arrived at the hostel and stumbled into bed at 5:00 am without even brushing my teeth.

Today I made my way to Kalpa, which is just ridiculously beautiful. I just saw the most vivid rainbow I’ve ever seen in my entire life, which would have been striking enough even without the snowcapped mountains in the background. This hostel is in the most perfect spot, with unbelievable views of the mountains, the apple orchards, and the actual city proper of Kalpa, which is clustered on top of a nearby hill.

Finally, I’m feeling like I can relax and take on India.

I recently watched Disney’s “A Christmas Carol” for probably the 10th time, while embarrassed to say I still have yet to read the original book. Throughout the course of the movie, I was so profoundly moved that I had to go retrieve my journal and put my thoughts into writing.

Here they are, in order of importance.

1. Bob Cratchit and Scrooge’s nephew don’t hate Scrooge—they feel sorry for him

“Oh, I have!” said Scrooge’s nephew. “I am sorry for him; I couldn’t be angry with him if I tried.

“Mr. Scrooge!” said Bob; “I’ll give you Mr. Scrooge, the Founder of the Feast!”

At first blush, this seems like just another iteration of the whole “love your enemies” trope—but I would argue it’s not. Loving your enemies, while undoubtedly remarkably difficult, has a sense of nobility, of honor, attached to it. If you can only bring yourself to do it, most people will probably admire and respect you for it.

But throughout “A Christmas Carol,” it’s pretty clear that Scrooge is not the enemy of his nephew or of Bob Cratchit in any real sense. He’s not trying to kill them, and he doesn’t hate them with any special vitriol he withholds from everyone else. No, Scrooge is not their enemy—he’s just obnoxious and cruel and bitter.

Curiously, I often find it harder to stop hating these types of people than to stop hating the actual avowed enemies of my family or country.

Think about it: When you’re in a circle with your close friends and you’re just bashing on somebody, who is it usually? Is it some government official in a foreign country who’s plotting the destruction of your country? Is it a genuinely malevolent person who would kill you if they could? Or is it just that one unremarkable “friend” who cares about nothing but himself, who finds something new to be cynical about every minute of every day?

The motivating insight that Bob Cratchit and Scrooge’s nephew both share is that selfishness and cynicism almost always hurt the perpetrator more than the victims. As Scrooge’s nephew says, “Who suffers by his ill whims! Himself, always.”

It’s startling how in a movie like “A Christmas Carol,” our eyes can well up with tears at Bob Cratchit’s selfless toast to Scrooge as “the Founder of the Feast,” or Scrooge’s nephew’s heartfelt invitation for Scrooge to attend his dinner party, and yet so brazenly ignore every opportunity we get to do the same for the pitiful, miserable Scrooges in our own lives.

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2. Scrooge says Mrs. Dilber is the loveliest creature he’s ever laid eyes on—and she’s hideous

Okay, this one is not in the book—only the Disney movie. I’m going to comment on it anyway, even though I know this will seriously diminish my ideal image as a mature lover of the classic works.

After his epiphany with the three ghosts, Scrooge runs into his maid, Mrs. Dilber. In the movie, she’s portrayed as monumentally ugly: crossed eyes, huge nose, pimpled skin, and missing teeth. She looks smelly, dirty and sick.

And yet, when Scrooge sees her he says, “My dear Mrs. Dilber, you’re the loveliest creature I have ever laid eyes upon.” And he grabs her and tries to dance with her! Something he’d experienced on his journeys with the ghosts brought it home to him that physical appearance and hygiene have absolutely nothing to do with a person’s worth.

But this is obvious, right? I’m sure every person reading this post right now, if asked a question to that effect, would answer wholeheartedly exactly as I have above. And yet… do we live our lives in this way?

To find out, I propose a simple test. Next time you interact with someone who looks (and smells) the way Mrs. Dilber does in the movie, pretend they don’t look that way. Pretend they’re beautiful (or handsome), clean, articulate, smelling of cologne, with shining white teeth, and ask yourself: “Would I interact with that person the same way I’m interacting with this person right now?” I’m almost certain the answer will be a resounding “No.”

Of all the instinctual urges present within myself, I find this one to be among the most utterly detestable.

3. Scrooge talks to beggars

When Scrooge leaves his house after his fateful night and walks down the street, Dickens says that he “questioned beggars.”

I’d wager that, even though heroin and fentanyl were likely not present in 1843 London, these beggars were quite similar to the many homeless we encounter in the 21st century, in that they were, for whatever reason, unable or unwilling to simply find a job and make an honest living, probably often due to personal failings or addictions—not mere helpless circumstance.

With this very specific language of saying that Scrooge “questioned beggars,” Dickens denies us the get-out-of-jail-free card of “Well, I’d give them money but they’ll just use it on drugs.” We can instead give them our time and our interest.

And, speaking from personal experience, a genuine five-minute conversation can provide a homeless person with far more meaning and happiness than five hundred-dollar bills.

Some people are really and truly alone in this world. Every day that you leave your house, you carry with you the tremendous power to change that—for free. Why not use it?

4. Scrooge finds beauty in everything

“He went to church, and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and fro, and patted children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of houses, and up to the windows, and found that everything could yield him pleasure. He had never dreamed that any walk—that anything—could give him so much happiness.”

Obviously, Scrooge was incapable of this type of gratitude and wonder before his ordeal. If you told him to try it, he would scoff at you. It was only through his tumultuous night with the three ghosts and the perspective he gained through it, that he became capable of this. If we went through the same things Scrooge went through, we’d probably come out the other side with a renewed vigor for life as well.

But if you’re like me, and your eyes fill up with tears at the beauty of “A Christmas Carol” every time you read it or watch it, you don’t actually have to go through something like this in order to gain Scrooge’s transcendent outlook—you can just read the story.

This is the wonder of the creative work, of inspiration, of the putting of the pen to paper and the spinning of a marvelous tale. Pretend you’re Scrooge. Pretend the ghosts showed all those very same things to you. Think of all the ways your life could be immeasurably worse than it is now, and just how trivially easy it is to live the small moments of your life in a way that is above reproach—and then walk the main street of your neighborhood and tell me everything doesn’t “yield you pleasure,” as Dickens puts it.

And if that isn’t doing it for you, you can actually put yourself through an experience similar to that which Scrooge went through. Just go visit a third-world country.

I’m serious—it’s actually kind of that simple.

5. Sorrow moves us (or at least, me) more than joy

Finally, stepping outside of the story itself, as I watched the movie I found it remarkable just how much more moved I was by the sorrowful moments than the joyful ones.

Sure, the final payoff of the changed Scrooge is what gives the story its actual cash value—but throughout the movie, I found my heart most intensely provoked during the sad scenes.

And the one in particular that serves as the perfect microcosm of this point is the following:

“As good as gold,” said Bob, “and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.”

Speaking from pure emotion, there seems to be such a rich beauty in the promise of redemption from suffering and sorrow. Could it be possible that a world with profound suffering that is then vanquished, is actually better than a world that never had that suffering in the first place?

My mind says no—but my heart says maybe.

Summary: Fiction is not fiction

As a romantic and a dreamer, I erect no walls between the themes I experience in movies and books, and the themes I’d like to see play out in my own life.

When my on-screen hero does something remarkable—when they choose love instead of hate, when they lift up the lowly, when they find beauty in the mundane—I want to see that become a reality in my own life and in the lives of those around me.

I think one of the reasons Christmas moves me so profoundly is that it’s one time of year when almost everyone can agree on that.

This Christmas, I challenge you to make that sentiment play out in your deeds as well as your words.

There is a place in Tanzania, Africa, and a girl who lives there. I’ve been to this place and I’ve met this girl.

The place is Kwa Mkono Disabled Children’s Center. It’s in Tanga, one of Tanzania’s poorest regions. It’s an orphanage and hospital for disabled children.

The girl, though I never got her name, is about 11 years old. When I met her, she was lying on a hospital bed in a dark room. Her hands, feet and legs were horribly disfigured, the privilege of walking clearly forever off the table for her. She was struggling through a bout of Malaria, having just vomited non-stop for days and only now beginning to recover.

Put yourself in her shoes, and think through this life with me.

Not only are you born in Tanzania, a third-world country—you’re born in Tanga, a rural region infamous for its droughts, floods, and subsequent severe poverty.

Your parents are either dead or long gone—to you, it makes no difference.

You can’t walk, and grew up dragging yourself around on the filthy floor while other kids ran freely—that is, until you arrived at the orphanage, where at least now you’re surrounded by other crippled children.

Every time you go outside the orphanage, strangers’ eyes linger on you longer than is comfortable, and you entertain no delusions about what parts of you they’re looking at and what they’re thinking.

You will likely never leave Tanga, and you will almost certainly never leave Tanzania. Even if you’re smart enough to eventually go to college, you can’t even hold a pencil or type on a keyboard—so what’s the use?

You will never own a car.

You will never buy a house.

You certainly will never travel the world, experience five-star dining, or own an iPhone.

For the rest of your life, every meal that you eat will be dependent on the charitable contributions of people you don’t know, and the immense self-sacrifice of the local Tanzanians who run the center.

Most heartbreaking of all, you have no family, and will never truly know what it’s like to be loved unconditionally by those who gave you life.

And then you get malaria in January of 2024, and though you beg for relief during the first bout of vomiting, you have no choice but to let the illness run its course over days. The fact that a random foreigner named Robbie walks into your room for 30 seconds and looks upon you with the utmost pity probably doesn’t even fully register.

You—not the girl, but you, dear reader—own a secondhand iPhone 8, drive a 1998 Honda Civic which is on its last legs, and are forced to live with roommates to save money on rent.

And you think you’re poor.

Note: This post is meant to be a sobering snapshot of the terrible realities that exist around the world for millions of people—it is not a fatalistic surrender.

Countless organizations, such as the one I partnered with, From Hearts 2 Hands, are working tirelessly to remedy these very problems. The people who run these organizations, and especially the local people who have dedicated their entire lives to helping children like the one recounted in this post, are my heroes.

Click here if you’d consider donating.

Humans are flawed, and we rarely know for certain what’s best for us. Most of you reading this right now are probably nodding internally in agreement with this statement—and yet next time the unexpected and unwanted intrudes on your well-laid plans, I bet you will resist it and rigidly course-correct with everything in you.

I want to tell you two things today. I want to tell you a short story about a long afternoon I spent lost in Sri Lanka—and I want to tell you how it changed the places I look to find meaning.

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From my journal:

“It’s ridiculous how I just can’t write in this journal everyday—it really shouldn’t be that hard and yet I always fail. There is so much to tell. First of all, on March 5^th I had one of those magical experiences which remind me why I love travel.”

My trip up to this point had taken me to Rock View Hostel in Ella, Sri Lanka. I knew I wanted to spend a week or so in Ella, but I was in one of those backpacking lulls where I didn’t really have anything specific on the immediate agenda, and I was asking around, doing some research on what my next little outing should be.

I eventually decided on going to see Lipton’s Seat, a beautiful scenic overlook about an hour-and-a-half’s motorcycle journey away from the hostel. Little did I know I would never make it to Lipton’s Seat, but would end up somewhere much, much better—a place that, at the time, didn’t even exist in my sphere of awareness.

Around 4 pm, I set out on my motorcycle (it was really an automatic moped, but motorcycle sounds much cooler, so I’m just going to go with that). My phone was only at around 50% battery, which, if you know me, is actually shockingly high. It was March, and I knew the sun set at around 6:30, which meant the last part of the return journey would likely be in the dark, but that was fine. My motorcycle had a headlight, after all.

Ella is high up in the mountains, and so it was actually pretty cold. As I drove, my surroundings slowly morphed from urban to rural. The bustling roadside shops and buildings all disappeared, replaced by a seemingly endless landscape of terraced tea fields, so vibrantly green as to be almost jarring.

Somewhere along the way, I made a wrong turn. Thinking back now, I’m not sure if I was too busy staring at the scenery, if my phone just lost internet for a bit, or what. I know I had the journey routed on Google Maps, but I’m so directionally challenged that no route is truly Robbie-proof—so I’m not surprised this happened.

I’m sure I spent a considerable period of time looking back and forth between the road and my phone, watching as Google struggled to calibrate my location and make a correction.

At a certain point, with the sky becoming ever more overcast and the white afternoon sunlight transitioning to that deeper yellow shade that always accompanies the sunset, it dawned on me that I was not going to make it to Lipton’s Seat with enough daylight left to fully appreciate the view—which was the only reason to go to Lipton’s Seat in the first place. I decided to just reverse course and head back to Ella.

If I had never made that wrong turn—if I was actually able to follow directions, and if Google Maps had done its job and generated a new route for me—then I’m almost certain this little escapade would never have made it into my travel journal, and I would not be sitting here racking my brain, trying to recall every last detail that would make the next few hours so magical.

The fields which surrounded me became progressively more stunning. I mean, just everywhere I looked, there were rolling fields of these green tea leaves, basically as far as the eye could see. I would round a bend in the road only for an even more majestic range of hills to sweep into view. The air was crisp and fresh, and I’m almost certain my eyes were watering from the breeze, the way they do when you’re skiing without goggles. The sky was crowded with dark clouds, but not so crowded that there was no sunlight. Yellow rays poked through here and there, lending a surreal, dreamlike quality to the whole scene.

Honestly, as I think back to those moments now, they feel almost ethereal. But is that due to the quality of the day itself as it actually was in reality, or the inevitable garnishes of memory, the embellishments our brains automatically layer on top of core experiences? And is there even an important difference between the two?

After some undefined length of time just lost in this new world, I rounded another bend and came across something unexpected: A group of about 15 Sri Lankan villagers—kids, adults, and old men—playing a game of cricket smack in the middle of a wide section of road.

From the way they looked at me, it seemed pretty clear that the occasional passing vehicle was a normal occurrence—for that vehicle to be driven by a white man was very rare indeed. After a moment’s indecision I slammed on the brakes and climbed off the motorcycle, which was ticking as it cooled.

I was soon completely surrounded, likely trying out every piece of Sinhalese I had learned so far. I like to think I was having broken conversations with them, but in reality, I was probably just saying “Ayubowan” (hello) over and over again while smiling like an idiot.

The kids, of whom there were probably five or so, were just staring at me unabashedly, as if I was some unknown entity about which they knew nothing—and actually, that was probably exactly what I was.

The best part of the whole encounter, though, was the overwhelming feeling of being welcome. Yes, I was an unknown entity—but I was an entity they liked, and they did not hesitate to show it. I kid you not, I’ve felt more uncomfortable walking into stores 15 minutes away from the house I grew up in than I did mingling with this random group of villagers halfway across the world.

In particular, I remember one old man shaking my hand, pointing at me, and repeatedly saying, “I like you!” but in his broken English it sounded more like, “I yike yoo!” He was smiling ear-to-ear the entire time.

I forget if they invited me to join the game of cricket, or if I asked them—but given all my experiences with Sri Lankans, I’m almost certain it was the former.

I stepped up to bat and, being an American who had played baseball as a kid, took an absolutely massive crack at the first pitch I got, not realizing that in cricket, where you hit the ball is much more important than how far. The ball was absolutely rocketed into right field, and the caveman in me is still proud of that, even though I was promptly declared “out” and had to step out of play.

In those moments, did it even dawn on me how much better this was than making it to Lipton’s Seat and seeing just another scenic overlook? Did I realize that over two years later, I’d be sitting in a coffee shop in California, writing an entire blog post about this little “mishap” of a day?

I don’t think so. And the reason I don’t think so is that I left those villagers way too soon in my quest to get back to my hostel.

To be fair, I think at this point my phone was almost dead, and the task of navigating back to the city of Ella was feeling more challenging by the moment—but knowing what I know now, and thinking back to that magical convergence of fates, I wish so badly that I had said “screw it” and finished that game with them. I’m almost certain I would have been invited back to someone’s house for dinner and hot tea afterward.

My phone did die, and I did make it back to my hostel—but I had to do it the old-fashioned way: reading signs and stopping every 10 minutes to ask a random person for directions.

Often, meaning is found most readily in the unexpected, the unknown, and the inconvenient. This is a skill that can be learned—but it can’t be learned the same way other skills can.

Becoming proficient in most skills is a simple matter of increasing your knowledge of the thing the skill pertains to. But the very point of this skill is that these potential moments of deep meaning will come upon you without you knowing they will. Mastery here necessitates a peace with your own ignorance; an ever-present willingness to abandon your well-laid plans at a moment’s notice.

And most of all, it demands from you a belief that the unknown which happens next just might be better than the known you’ve been hoping for.

Make yourself believe this next time something goes irreversibly wrong, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised. I’m sure of it.

During a solo road trip from New Jersey to Wyoming, I lost my truck in a massive Chicago parking garage.

I spent close to an hour walking around and around, up and down the different levels, desperately trying to locate it in what seemed an endless hellscape of grey concrete. That hideous, nervous nausea increased with each minute that passed, each bend I anxiously walked around only to see another hundred cars that were not mine. It also didn’t help that it was December and absolutely freezing.

Needless to say, I finally found my truck—but the experience stuck with me, especially as I looked toward my “big trip:” an open-ended, solo backpacking journey through Southeast Asia and eventually India.

I thought back to every Indiana Jones movie I’d seen, every depiction of some hectic city or tropical market town. Who do I call if I end up hopelessly lost in one of these utterly foreign places, with street names written in another language? Surely it would be just like losing my truck in Chicago, only with an order of magnitude increase in the fear and helplessness.

And forget about what to do if I actually did get lost—what about just the constant work of having to keep myself oriented so as not to get lost in the first place? Would I even be able to feel the freedom I so desperately wanted while having to do all this work?

But once I got out there, something happened that I didn’t expect. That fear of getting lost, that constant need to remember where I’d come from just… wasn’t there. I remember trying to wrap my head around this, in Bangkok (the first city I visited) and everywhere else. Here I am, in the middle of [insert your Asian city here], and yet that feeling in the pit of my stomach is absent. I’m just… not scared of getting lost—like, at all. Why?

It was then that I realized the feeling of being lost is not the feeling of being somewhere new and strange; it’s not even the feeling of being disoriented in your immediate surroundings, or losing the street you just came from. It’s the feeling of being away from your stuff—or your people.

Every single thing that I owned in this new life of mine fit comfortably in the 21.5-inch backpack that sat on my shoulders. And this was a solo trip—just me. There was nothing I needed to orient myself towards. When your home is literally on your back, you’re always home. That sick, panicked feeling of being lost just loses its meaning. And what a beautiful thing that is.

Take a moment and think about your life. What aspects are the most meaningful and valuable to you? Your faith, your family, your integrity—whatever they are, make a promise right now to never separate yourself from those things—physically or metaphorically—and you will never lose your way. How could you, if your home is always with you?

And to my fellow backpackers out there: Pack light, gosh darn it. If your backpack is so big and heavy you’re constantly dying to shrug off and leave it somewhere—well, don’t get mad at me when you get lost.