A Fork in Every Traveler's Road

Traveling is like any other experience once you go deeper into it - it becomes incredibly nourishing and fulfilling in ways you could never imagine. You learn things about yourself you never knew were there, you have unforgettable experiences, you make amazing human connections. And sometimes the traveling experience becomes so addictive that you end up giving up your previous life entirely, to go traveling for years, maybe even decades.

And at some point you look back and wonder how you got to this place in your life, having experienced more than most people do in five lifetimes, yet feeling like you're on the outside looking in...

A lovely mix of working/volunteering travelers in Ollantaytambo, Peru 2017

Here in a nutshell (or not) is the emotional journey that leads the traveler to this eventual fork in the road. And I'll use some nerdy science to explain!

-~*~-

Beyond the most obvious and somewhat superficial reasons of going to cool places and checking off the bucket list, it can be hard to understand why one goes traveling in the first place. There certainly are more subtle, less obvious reasons why we travel.

From our tender youths, our brains are actually operating largely in the theta wavelength - this allows our brains to make and reproduce observations - in simple terms, in our youth, we learn to copy the behaviours of our family and our peers, to learn and conform to the culture of our society.

After age 7, our brains switch to a different wavelength, beta - signalling a new stage in life, one where we discover what it is we want for ourselves, how to carve out our own identity. And in this new stage, if we already fit in to the society around us, then there's no change needed or tension to address.

However, if we have a disconnect from the society around us we end up longing for escape. This societal disconnect could be with family, community or even country.

Stargazing in Uyuni Salt Flats, Bolivia 2017

When we travel, the whole experience is usually so new and stimulating that we tend to get wrapped up in the novelty of travel. Rarely do we see it as escaping from our native society as if it were a prison.

But it no doubt includes this reason - an opportunity to get away from everything we once knew, the society we grew up in, to start afresh with a clean slate, a chance to rewrite those cultural norms we learned until (and since) age 7.

So most of us go traveling for two general reasons - we are simultaneously being pulled to new experiences and pushed away from home.

But at some point the pull gets old. Like any other experience, if you travel long enough, eventually the novelty wears out. Believe it or not this can actually happen, you can start getting tired of traveling!

It happened to me anyway. At some point along my travels, I discovered that my passion for traveling had dwindled. And yet I was still doing it.

Eventually I realized the reasons as I have just been discussing - the novelty of traveling was fading away, and I was mainly escaping. In my younger days I did feel a disconnect from society, which fueled my escape. I also began long term traveling out of both discovery and escape, and now the latter was all there was left.

Playing... hopscotch? Annapurna Base Camp, Nepal 2014

This is the fork in the road - the moment when the novelty of travel fades away and no longer becomes a strong reason to continue traveling.

There are certainly long term travelers who make exception to the fork in the road - there are some whose lust for travel never dies, there are some whose disconnect from home is so strong they simply never want to go back. And there are some who never become aware of this fork in the road realization.

If you're reading this and feel stuck in your life, ask yourself this - do you feel stuck in your society, stuck in your job, stuck with your friends or family? Perhaps it is time to ride along your beta waves and go traveling to find your true identity.

Or if you are traveling without a purpose, are you simply continuing to escape from home? Then perhaps it is time to go home after all. And as difficult as it will be to confront the reasons you originally escaped, hopefully you have now developed the tools and adaptability through traveling to be able to overcome those reasons.

On my way to my hitchhiking spot towards Berlin - Warsaw, Poland 2015

Personally I did eventually return home. It has been a long process of overcoming, and I am still in the process of it. But luckily I have learned the tools and patience necessary to slowly reintegrate into Toronto society.

However, the travel bug has returned and I am longing - not for escape - but for adventure once again!

I am a Modern Day Hippie and Proud of It

I dove into hippie culture a couple of years ago, attending music festivals, discovering psychedelics in a big way, long term traveling, and overall living a free life.

I like bright colours - India, 2014

At a beautifully small intimate music festival - near Vancouver, 2016

Shambhala Music Festival, 2016

Since then I've had a hard time describing myself in conversations with people. I consider myself a hippie now but had a bit of an identity crisis at one point, as I noticed that a lot of people avoid using the word, as there seemed to be a lot of negative connotations attached to it.

Hippie is a term I have been individually mulling as well as discussing with others for quite awhile, and I think I am ready to share my thoughts about it. But first, a little context.

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The Hippie Era came into existence with the introduction of LSD to American culture, thanks to rogue professor Timothy Leary, who originally secretly experimented with it, then defying the constraints of his research project, unleashed it to the world.

Leary famously told everyone to "turn on, tune in, drop out" as LSD dissolves boundaries created within our minds. The result is peace and love, tie dye, and a tendency to lose faith in authority.

But peace and love was the association that stuck with the hippies of the 60s.

Today, however, it's quite a different story. Today, hippies are mostly associated with dreadlocks and irresponsibility. As outcasts from society who dress in ragged clothing, don't shower, don't work and wander around aimlessly and often selfishly nourishing their bottomless need for spiritual fulfillment.

How did this happen? In the course of half a century, the term hippie went from being a unique niche in society to being derogatory. While the core values of hippieism from the 60s were retained since its inception - that of peace, love and rebelling against authority - these values have been usurped by more superficial traits such as their unkempt appearance or lack of footwear.

While hippieism was a new and novel thing in the 60s, over time it has evolved to become an easy target for society. Since society is consisted of a vast majority who conform to its norms, this majority feels threatened by those who don't conform in the same way.

However, with the growing awareness in the world of how modern society is getting so many things wrong more and more people than ever are starting to not conform. Or as Timothy Leary put it, they're turning on their brains, tuning in to the real issues, and dropping out of society.

Just a bunch of hippies on the beach - near Tofino, BC, 2016

Meditation session - Tribe Festival near Canmore, AB, 2016

And those who don't conform are getting lumped into one fringe category - that's right, the hippies. So the user group "hippie" has become watered down to encompass all people that don't conform from potheads, festival goers, anarchists and artists all the way to permaculturalists.

This has brought a lot of confusion to the identity of hippieism and left out of the argument is the core values that highlight the positives.

~-*-~

Stubborn as this goal may be, I want to reverse the watering down of the term. I want to restore the old definition and restore the integrity of what it means to be a hippie. If this means risking my own reputation as I describe myself to others, I don't care. I'm happy if I can take the next step and arrive at a meaningful discussion about the topic.

The real meaning of being hippie goes to the core values - it's about peace and love, living closer to nature and connecting with other people. It's not about Native headdresses, eating granola or hula hooping.

In these values I personally strongly believe. In these values I am proud! And I want other hippies to be proud too.

But I know that it's much easier to judge a book by its cover. Too bad that doesn't work with me. Because I rarely dress like a hippie. No dreadlocks, a few small hidden tattoos, unripped jeans and normal sweaters, no obvious smell (though grandma says otherwise).

I choose to fit the appearance stereotypes in select contexts - at music festivals, or when I'm traveling. But in most contexts I look like you're average joe.

Unfortunately, every user group is subject to such extremism, in which a few extreme users taint the reputation of the entire group. A few bad cyclists give all bad cyclists a bad name, and fuel for drivers to hate all of them. And of course we've heard of religious extremists and terrorists, which give all followers of that religion a bad name.

All this extremism just causes labeling and an us versus them mentality. And it needs to stop.

So call me an advocate for real hippies! I hope I can dissolve the boundaries within your mind about what a hippie is. If you are interested in dissolving boundaries with me, let's talk and get to know eachother!

PEACE. And ...

LOVE
Uyuni Salt Flats, Bolivia 2017