For the past two years, I haven’t lived in a single location (and city) where I knew I was going to be there for more than two months.
In July, it will have been two years since the original road trip was planned. In fact, living in that van was the most certain I’ve been about my living situation for more than five weeks at a time.
That ended in December of 2007. I barely moved back into my house when I had an offer on it. I was out shortly and immediately decided to drive up and down the East coast for a few weeks.
Seeing that work – as in, I still paid my bills – I decided to drive around the country for a full six months, living in single month sublets I would find on Craigslist…more than once, I finished a 40 hour drive into a new city without a completely finalized living location.
I decided to settle down with a ladyfriend, just outside of Boston, planning on putting my roots down for a few years.
That didn’t happen.
Last week, I made a contractual commitment to one year in the same city and same residence.
Austin, Texas.
Those who know me know much I love Austin. (The capital of the greatest nation in the world.) It’s the heat that’s kept me away. I decided to deal with it and live where I always wanted to live….with the other weirdos. And the ladyfriend is coming, too.
All of this happened during a time when (not “because”…”when”) I started reading the stoics. Seneca floored me in his first lesson:
… do not tear from place to place and unsettle yourself with one move after another. Restlessness of that sort is symptomatic of a sick mind. Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well ordered mind than a man’s ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.
- Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
The truth is, my mind had been sick.
I had reached a point after years of being “driven” toward decisions that I had haphazardly made. That only leads to one place…and that place was discovered three years ago. I had poisoned myself with my own haphazard thinking. My life around me turned into a house of cards.
I found myself that summer, literally, swinging from the rafters in my garage through a terribly hot July and August, tearing down the drywall in the ceiling. I was putting up a rock climbing wall….anything to unleash my anger and frustration, while feeling some sort of surface satisfaction. I refused to think about it on a deeper level out of self-preservation.
It would be eight months before I began to get over myself.
I didn’t know what to do there anymore, so I left. Only, I didn’t know where I wanted to go. So, I went everywhere. Whenever people asked, I found some sort of rationalization to create as a context for my decisions. It was a lot easier than figuring out what was beneath all of the junk that I had let accumulate in my life.
The common wisdom is that those who travel a lot, who go along with the wind, are looking for (or running from) something. The common wisdom follows to say that what they are looking for is inside of them all along.
When I put myself in this context, the only thing that makes sense to me is this:
And in that shifting form, you’ll find a truth that doesn’t change
And that truth is living proof of the fact that God is strange- Saul Williams, Talk to Strangers
It’s been a fantastic three years of questions and answers and perpetually recursive exploration and evolution.
I’ll keep reading the world’s religions and obscure philosophies, appreciating meanings and connections through all of it. I’ll keep studying myself and people as a whole, their decisions, their cultures, and their values. I’ll keep traveling, and always return to the two places that I call home. I’ll keep seeking out others who constantly challenge themselves and seek out challenge from others. I’ve even begun reading fiction (Shock! Horror!). I’ll keep making the distinction that “If I can’t, I must.” And I’ll keep doing the things that defy conventional wisdom, but so obviously provide very real utility and value in my life.
I’ve found some of those truths that haven’t changed, and I’ve even turned some into action. Ontolo is one of those, Austin is another, and some other things that you might be closer to than you realize.
I’ve spent the last three years consulting those who have devoted their lives to “figuring it out.” There are a lot of answers out there. But they’re all someone else’s answers.
I’ll keep trying to find my own.
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