Category: Traveling
Crossing the world to find yourself: How to use traveling as a tool for personal growth
In the Tortuga Boluuda hostel in Léon, Nicaragua, I was examining a Land Rover Defender parked outside when an English gentleman arrived on the scene. It turned out that he and his wife were on a two year long car trip around the world that had already taken them through the whole Asia and was now taking them through America from north to south. I saw the opportunity and immediately asked what such a long trip had learned them about good living. The most important lesson was clear: Traveling changes your worldview, whether you want it or not. They had experienced it themselves and everyone they had met who had done a similar trip told the same. Are you prepared to change? Would you like to use traveling as a tool for your personal growth?
The gentleman explained that by living in your home country you learn to look at the world through the lenses provided by that culture. The people around you condition you to look at the world in a certain way. You acquire the feeling that certain forms of behavior are normal and acceptable while certain others are not. This is what changes when you travel long enough. You become aware of other ways to look and evaluate the world around you. As a mundane example the gentleman told how in Kazakhstan the public toilets lacked doors:
So there he was, sitting in the toilet with his pants down when a local farmer with a donkey passed by. The Englishman looked at the farmer, the farmer looked back at him, and he felt that this was totally normal. Back in Britain the same scene would have felt extremely embarrassing.
To use traveling as a tool for your internal growth three conditions have to be met:
Firstly, any deeper change of worldview requires time. A week or two is not enough because you carry your cultural package wherever you go. Only through time you learn to gradually look beyond it in interpreting the behavior of others. This is why everyone should at least once in their life live amongst a culture that is not their own. One doesn’t have to take such a ambitious trip that spans all continents to achieve that, it is enough to stay put in some other country preferably a bit further away from home. More important than the location is time, the longer you stay the deeper insight you achieve about the new culture – and through that of your own culture.
Secondly, one needs some courage, the gentleman told. When you step outside your worldview and examine it critically you simultaneously step outside of your comfort zone. It can be quite a painful experience to learn that something you have believed in and based your life decisions on isn’t so certain after all. Abandoning your deeply-held beliefs is hard. To achieve that you have to have enough strength of character. Otherwise you easily fall into a defensive state where you blind yourself from seeing what could be detrimental in your current worldview and furiously defend it against all differing ways of living.
Thirdly, you need to expose yourself to the real life of the country you are in. It is perfectly possible to travel around the world without leaving the comforts of western living behind. One can take sunbaths in a gated resort on the coast of Tansania feeling lucky that the realities of the poor life of the local people is out of sight. But this kind of disneyland-traveling doesn’t learn you anything. What you need to do is to step outside the tourist traps and encounter the local way of living. Visit their homes, walk around in their farms, eat with them. Only in meetings with ordinary people does genuine cultural exchange occur.
The gentleman told also another perhaps even more revealing example of how important the skill to interpret situations from the perspective of the other is. This time the scene took place in Honduras:
The couple had camped in the jungle near a village where indigenous Mizkito people lived in very rural conditions. Driven by curiosity the local kids had come to look at them and befriended them. The couple was eating and the kids asked for food so they gave a little food for the kids. Next day the kids who again had come to play around with them asked for some cooking oil. They even suggested that they can wash the car and get some oil as a reward. The couple running low on the cooking oil told that they can’t give it to them. Later they noticed how someone had stolen the oil bottle. When one of the kids returned the man told him how disappointed he was. Embarrassed the kid returned the empty bottle and said that the oil went to his mom.
From the western point of view the situation is clear: The kids stole the oil and stealing is morally wrong. End of story. From the local, more collective perspective where ownership is not such a holy cow the situation is more complicated. In these kinds of cultures it is regarded as common place that those who have share with those who haven’t. Even though the couple from their own perspective was running low on food and had a tight budget ($20 per day which is already quite little), compared to the kids they were extremely wealthy. From the perspective of the village people the car alone confirmed that. They might have felt it unjustifiable that the couple was not willing to share even a little bit of oil with them. So they took the justice in their own hands.
Hearing this story was a learning point for me. If I would have been in their situation I most probably wouldn’t have been able to look at the crime from this perspective. And most probably if this had happened during one of the first days of their trip the gentleman wouldn’t have had the widened perspective either to look at the matter from this angle. But after more than a full year of travel and contact with different indigenous people he had already learned a thing or two about their worldviews. The long nights spent at small villages in Ukraine, Mongolia, Guatemala and other countries along the way had paid off.
But be warned, the internal growth comes with a price. It might be surprising to learn that the hardest part of a long-term trip is going back home. It is quite understandable, however, given the changes you have gone through. You are a different person, most probably enlightened in many ways compared to your old self. And there you are, back home where nothing has changed: Your friends are the same, your work and colleagues are the same, the society and everything is the same. How are you able to cope? There seems to be a place carved for you by your old self but somewhat you feel that you don’t fit into it anymore.
Two issues in particular worried the gentleman. Firstly he felt that in some ways his views about the upsides and downsides of modern western societies had changed. And he was afraid that his old friends and colleagues would not understand his changed viewpoints. Secondly, he had been a quite successful leadership consultant before their trip. But given all he had experienced and all the ways in which his attitudes and values had changed during the trip he wasn’t sure that he simply could jump back in that career.
They still had a long way to go – through the South America, cross the Atlantic, and through the Africa – but sooner or later he would have to take issues with what way of living he could commit himself to in the future. What kind of place could he find in the society that had been his home throughout his life but that he had to learned to look from a new angle because of their trip?
By exposing yourself to different people with different world-views you run the risk of changing yourself, your values and your way of living – sometimes even radically. That is called evolution of thinking, it is personal growth. But are you ready for that?In the Tortuga Boluuda hostel in Léon, Nicaragua, I was examining a Land Rover Defender parked outside when an English gentleman arrived on the scene. It turned out that he and his wife were on a two year long car trip around the world that had already taken them through the whole Asia and was now taking them through America from north to south. I saw the opportunity and immediately asked what such a long trip had learned them about good living. The most important lesson was clear: Traveling changes your worldview, whether you want it or not. They had experienced it themselves and everyone they had met who had done a similar trip told the same. Are you prepared to change? Would you like to use traveling as a tool for your personal growth?
The gentleman explained that by living in your home country you learn to look at the world through the lenses provided by that culture. The people around you condition you to look at the world in a certain way. You acquire the feeling that certain forms of behavior are normal and acceptable while certain others are not. This is what changes when you travel long enough. You become aware of other ways to look and evaluate the world around you. As a mundane example the gentleman told how in Kazakhstan the public toilets lacked doors:
So there he was, sitting in the toilet with his pants down when a local farmer with a donkey passed by. The Englishman looked at the farmer, the farmer looked back at him, and he felt that this was totally normal. Back in Britain the same scene would have felt extremely embarrassing.
To use traveling as a tool for your internal growth three conditions have to be met:
Firstly, any deeper change of worldview requires time. A week or two is not enough because you carry your cultural package wherever you go. Only through time you learn to gradually look beyond it in interpreting the behavior of others. This is why everyone should at least once in their life live amongst a culture that is not their own. One doesn’t have to take such a ambitious trip that spans all continents to achieve that, it is enough to stay put in some other country preferably a bit further away from home. More important than the location is time, the longer you stay the deeper insight you achieve about the new culture – and through that of your own culture.
Secondly, one needs some courage, the gentleman told. When you step outside your worldview and examine it critically you simultaneously step outside of your comfort zone. It can be quite a painful experience to learn that something you have believed in and based your life decisions on isn’t so certain after all. Abandoning your deeply-held beliefs is hard. To achieve that you have to have enough strength of character. Otherwise you easily fall into a defensive state where you blind yourself from seeing what could be detrimental in your current worldview and furiously defend it against all differing ways of living.
Thirdly, you need to expose yourself to the real life of the country you are in. It is perfectly possible to travel around the world without leaving the comforts of western living behind. One can take sunbaths in a gated resort on the coast of Tansania feeling lucky that the realities of the poor life of the local people is out of sight. But this kind of disneyland-traveling doesn’t learn you anything. What you need to do is to step outside the tourist traps and encounter the local way of living. Visit their homes, walk around in their farms, eat with them. Only in meetings with ordinary people does genuine cultural exchange occur.
The gentleman told also another perhaps even more revealing example of how important the skill to interpret situations from the perspective of the other is. This time the scene took place in Honduras:
The couple had camped in the jungle near a village where indigenous Mizkito people lived in very rural conditions. Driven by curiosity the local kids had come to look at them and befriended them. The couple was eating and the kids asked for food so they gave a little food for the kids. Next day the kids who again had come to play around with them asked for some cooking oil. They even suggested that they can wash the car and get some oil as a reward. The couple running low on the cooking oil told that they can’t give it to them. Later they noticed how someone had stolen the oil bottle. When one of the kids returned the man told him how disappointed he was. Embarrassed the kid returned the empty bottle and said that the oil went to his mom.
From the western point of view the situation is clear: The kids stole the oil and stealing is morally wrong. End of story. From the local, more collective perspective where ownership is not such a holy cow the situation is more complicated. In these kinds of cultures it is regarded as common place that those who have share with those who haven’t. Even though the couple from their own perspective was running low on food and had a tight budget ($20 per day which is already quite little), compared to the kids they were extremely wealthy. From the perspective of the village people the car alone confirmed that. They might have felt it unjustifiable that the couple was not willing to share even a little bit of oil with them. So they took the justice in their own hands.
Hearing this story was a learning point for me. If I would have been in their situation I most probably wouldn’t have been able to look at the crime from this perspective. And most probably if this had happened during one of the first days of their trip the gentleman wouldn’t have had the widened perspective either to look at the matter from this angle. But after more than a full year of travel and contact with different indigenous people he had already learned a thing or two about their worldviews. The long nights spent at small villages in Ukraine, Mongolia, Guatemala and other countries along the way had paid off.
But be warned, the internal growth comes with a price. It might be surprising to learn that the hardest part of a long-term trip is going back home. It is quite understandable, however, given the changes you have gone through. You are a different person, most probably enlightened in many ways compared to your old self. And there you are, back home where nothing has changed: Your friends are the same, your work and colleagues are the same, the society and everything is the same. How are you able to cope? There seems to be a place carved for you by your old self but somewhat you feel that you don’t fit into it anymore.
Two issues in particular worried the gentleman. Firstly he felt that in some ways his views about the upsides and downsides of modern western societies had changed. And he was afraid that his old friends and colleagues would not understand his changed viewpoints. Secondly, he had been a quite successful leadership consultant before their trip. But given all he had experienced and all the ways in which his attitudes and values had changed during the trip he wasn’t sure that he simply could jump back in that career.
They still had a long way to go – through the South America, cross the Atlantic, and through the Africa – but sooner or later he would have to take issues with what way of living he could commit himself to in the future. What kind of place could he find in the society that had been his home throughout his life but that he had to learned to look from a new angle because of their trip?
By exposing yourself to different people with different world-views you run the risk of changing yourself, your values and your way of living – sometimes even radically. That is called evolution of thinking, it is personal growth. But are you ready for that?
Who pays for the beers? Traveling dilemmas in the face of huge income differences
I’ve now spent some time on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua. Mostly it has been a great time – I’ve enjoyed the calm sea, the beautiful small villages, the friendly people – but what has constantly irritated me is the fact that almost everyone I talk with wants my money. I walk around the village and somebody says hi. We engage into a conversation and when I attempt to leave, if not before, the other asks if I could spare a dollar or two because he really needs to buy water, beer, medicine, whatever. I walk towards a hotel and some friendly person starts to walk with me to guide me there. Whilst there he tells that his service costed me 3 dollars. I chat with a bar-owner and amongst the merry conversation he starts to push me to move into the hotel he also owns.
These kinds of experiences, when repeated all over the day, start to have a toll on one’s morale. Is it simply impossible to meet with anyone who doesn’t see me as a walking wallet? When encountering the locals in such atmosphere one can never put one’s guards down and relax because one never knows from what direction and through what shape the request for money comes from. One starts to seek the company of fellow travelers who one can trust. Unfortunately, I hadn’t met any for six days. These remote villages are clearly still waiting for the tourists to come. Amongst all this, I started to wonder is my anxiety simply the result of my cultural upbringing?
For us westerners, ownership is everything. It is a basic right, the one principle around which our society is built. Ownership is our culture’s holy cow, worshipped and never put into question. But this individualistic take on ownership is not shared by all cultures. Many indigenous cultures put much more emphasis on sharing and joint ownership. My house is your house, if you are hungry and I have food, the food is also yours. In conditions where one’ security network are the people one knows, people have learned to share.
My friend's mother in her kitchen
Nicaraguans, especially in these poor villages, were clearly closer to ideas about the shared nature of ownership. I learned this even before arriving when reading some books about the cultural customs of people in Nicaragua in which I encountered several times the warning that if one marries a local man or woman one marries his or her whole family. Suddenly the family sees it as your responsibility to pay for the aunt’s dentist bill or the nephew’s education. For them it is perfectly ordinary that in the extended family those who have help those who haven’t. So when they ask for money they are not exploiting you but only doing what is natural in their culture. It might be added that this attitude of sharing lives well in some marginal groups in our home countries as well. I’ve learned to know some hippie people for whom it is common that the one who has cash at the moment pays the beers of the friends also.
I don’t feel like a rich person. My salary is quite much around the average Finnish salary level. A few years back, while living in Thailand for half a year I met with a young Danish guy who had made a fortune through some IT business From time to time, when we went to a bar in a big group, he bought the table full of drinks and shared them with everybody. I appreciated this and thought that if ever I have my hands on equal fortune, I will behave the same.
Yet, compared to these people in the villages of Nicaragua I am the one who possesses a fortune. Many of them live practically outside of the financial economy, getting their needs met through doing things themselves and through exchanging and sharing. During an average month, most people in these villages live with less than a hundred dollars. This means that my average income is actually around thirty times bigger than theirs. That is a huge difference in income if something. It makes oneself wonder what really is morally right and wrong in these situations.
So this one day I walked towards another village around half an hour walk away. En route I met a girl who had the same destination. We engaged in a conversation and whilst in the village she showed me around and introduced me to people. I wanted to repay this generosity and offered to buy a beer to her and her cousin who had joined our tour around the village. They gladly agreed. After the first beer, why not have a second one? Without anyone saying it aloud it was clear that I am going to pay this round also. And the third round into which another cousin joined in. There would have been a fourth round unless I had run out of cash.
Drinking a few beers in Marshall Point
Was I exploited? I think not. The interest these people showed in me was genuine, we had real conversations about the differences of life in our respective countries and we laughed. In my travels I’ve met all sorts of scam artists whose evil intentions are easily spotted behind their supposedly friendly smile and ”my friend, my friend” shouts. These were not that kind of people. They wanted to have a good time with me, drink some beer, and most probably lacked the cash to buy it themselves. So the only genuine other option was for me to drink alone. It might be added that even when I paid for the four of us, I paid less than I would pay for one beer in the bars I frequent back home.
The next night, I was drinking a few beers with a guy who was barefoot because he couldn’t afford new shoes. Having at least ten pairs of shoes back home, it would have felt rude and unjustifiable to ask for him to pay his own beer whilst we were drinking together. The next day the favor was returned when he showed me around the village, introduced me to people and offered a meal his mother had cooked. A day after that his cousin (in these small villages everyone seemed to be cousin with everyone) took me to a jungle trek to see his family’s farm.
So given the huge income difference it might just be right that I pay the bill. Of course, it becomes crucially important to be able to separate two sorts of people from each other: one the one hand those who befriend me only for the purpose of ripping as much cash out of me as possible – and who often are willing to use every trick and scam to get it. And on the other those who are really interested in me as a person and want to be friends with me. And for whom it then is just natural that I as the one with enormously more cash pay up the beers. But things are not even as easy as this: I’ve met with many people who lye somewhere in between these extremes. They are interested in the funny looking foreigner but they also are seduced by the possibility to get something from them. In real-life moral dilemmas in which one encounters real people things are only black and white if one refuses to see the colors.
I’ve now spent some time on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua. Mostly it has been a great time – I’ve enjoyed the calm sea, the beautiful small villages, the friendly people – but what has constantly irritated me is the fact that almost everyone I talk with wants my money. I walk around the village and somebody says hi. We engage into a conversation and when I attempt to leave, if not before, the other asks if I could spare a dollar or two because he really needs to buy water, beer, medicine, whatever. I walk towards a hotel and some friendly person starts to walk with me to guide me there. Whilst there he tells that his service costed me 3 dollars. I chat with a bar-owner and amongst the merry conversation he starts to push me to move into the hotel he also owns.
These kinds of experiences, when repeated all over the day, start to have a toll on one’s morale. Is it simply impossible to meet with anyone who doesn’t see me as a walking wallet? When encountering the locals in such atmosphere one can never put one’s guards down and relax because one never knows from what direction and through what shape the request for money comes from. One starts to seek the company of fellow travelers who one can trust. Unfortunately, I hadn’t met any for six days. These remote villages are clearly still waiting for the tourists to come. Amongst all this, I started to wonder is my anxiety simply the result of my cultural upbringing?
For us westerners, ownership is everything. It is a basic right, the one principle around which our society is built. Ownership is our culture’s holy cow, worshipped and never put into question. But this individualistic take on ownership is not shared by all cultures. Many indigenous cultures put much more emphasis on sharing and joint ownership. My house is your house, if you are hungry and I have food, the food is also yours. In conditions where one’ security network are the people one knows, people have learned to share.
My friend's mother in her kitchen
Nicaraguans, especially in these poor villages, were clearly closer to ideas about the shared nature of ownership. I learned this even before arriving when reading some books about the cultural customs of people in Nicaragua in which I encountered several times the warning that if one marries a local man or woman one marries his or her whole family. Suddenly the family sees it as your responsibility to pay for the aunt’s dentist bill or the nephew’s education. For them it is perfectly ordinary that in the extended family those who have help those who haven’t. So when they ask for money they are not exploiting you but only doing what is natural in their culture. It might be added that this attitude of sharing lives well in some marginal groups in our home countries as well. I’ve learned to know some hippie people for whom it is common that the one who has cash at the moment pays the beers of the friends also.
I don’t feel like a rich person. My salary is quite much around the average Finnish salary level. A few years back, while living in Thailand for half a year I met with a young Danish guy who had made a fortune through some IT business From time to time, when we went to a bar in a big group, he bought the table full of drinks and shared them with everybody. I appreciated this and thought that if ever I have my hands on equal fortune, I will behave the same.
Yet, compared to these people in the villages of Nicaragua I am the one who possesses a fortune. Many of them live practically outside of the financial economy, getting their needs met through doing things themselves and through exchanging and sharing. During an average month, most people in these villages live with less than a hundred dollars. This means that my average income is actually around thirty times bigger than theirs. That is a huge difference in income if something. It makes oneself wonder what really is morally right and wrong in these situations.
So this one day I walked towards another village around half an hour walk away. En route I met a girl who had the same destination. We engaged in a conversation and whilst in the village she showed me around and introduced me to people. I wanted to repay this generosity and offered to buy a beer to her and her cousin who had joined our tour around the village. They gladly agreed. After the first beer, why not have a second one? Without anyone saying it aloud it was clear that I am going to pay this round also. And the third round into which another cousin joined in. There would have been a fourth round unless I had run out of cash.
Drinking a few beers in Marshall Point
Was I exploited? I think not. The interest these people showed in me was genuine, we had real conversations about the differences of life in our respective countries and we laughed. In my travels I’ve met all sorts of scam artists whose evil intentions are easily spotted behind their supposedly friendly smile and ”my friend, my friend” shouts. These were not that kind of people. They wanted to have a good time with me, drink some beer, and most probably lacked the cash to buy it themselves. So the only genuine other option was for me to drink alone. It might be added that even when I paid for the four of us, I paid less than I would pay for one beer in the bars I frequent back home.
The next night, I was drinking a few beers with a guy who was barefoot because he couldn’t afford new shoes. Having at least ten pairs of shoes back home, it would have felt rude and unjustifiable to ask for him to pay his own beer whilst we were drinking together. The next day the favor was returned when he showed me around the village, introduced me to people and offered a meal his mother had cooked. A day after that his cousin (in these small villages everyone seemed to be cousin with everyone) took me to a jungle trek to see his family’s farm.
So given the huge income difference it might just be right that I pay the bill. Of course, it becomes crucially important to be able to separate two sorts of people from each other: one the one hand those who befriend me only for the purpose of ripping as much cash out of me as possible – and who often are willing to use every trick and scam to get it. And on the other those who are really interested in me as a person and want to be friends with me. And for whom it then is just natural that I as the one with enormously more cash pay up the beers. But things are not even as easy as this: I’ve met with many people who lye somewhere in between these extremes. They are interested in the funny looking foreigner but they also are seduced by the possibility to get something from them. In real-life moral dilemmas in which one encounters real people things are only black and white if one refuses to see the colors.
Why I love the sea – and what does it have to do with meaningful life?
Sea is my element. If I haven’t fully understood it before, now I know it. Having stayed inland for more than three weeks I remember the sudden burst of excitement I got when I first filled my lungs with the salty smell of the sea on the way towards Bluefields on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua. And when I closed my eyes on the boat-ride that finally took me to Bluefields the sound of the engine and waving motion of the boat immediately sent me to my childhood boat-rides to our summer cottage. Next evening eating in a restaurant built literally above the sea on poles I was looking out in the darkness when I noticed two lights – the left one green and the right one red – somewhere in the darkness. A warm sense of familiarity, emphasis on the famili-part, filled me as I knew that it was a boat approaching the harbor.
Childhood is when the basic elements of our identity are put into the place; who are we and where we belong to. And the sea was strongly present in my childhood. If someone would ask me what is my favorite place on earth I would immediately know the answer: a certain tiny island in the Finnish Gulf of the Baltic Sea. That’s where my family’s summer cottage is and where all my childhood summers were spent. Except of course for my dad’s month long summer vacation which was spent on a sailing boat. Calculating these summer months on a sailing boat together with the nine months I spent in the Finnish navy ships whilst serving the obligatory military service I could say that before the age of twenty I had spent around two years of my life sleeping on boats surrounded by the salty water.
Now I am 9.844 kilometers and one ocean away from there, in a different culture and without having met a single person from my home country in over a month. Traveling alone for such a long time one can’t avoid the moments of homesickness. Although one meets a lot of people, sometimes the loneliness grows on you and you look sadly into the distance thinking about and longing to the people and places dear to you. But when I got to the sea, half of all this was suddenly gone. That’s because I grew up with the sea. It is as much a part of my story as are many people who are close to me. Sea is part of my identity, it is part of my answer to the question ’where I belong to’. It is like a good friend – almost a member of the family. So when I am with the sea, I am no longer alone.
That’s also why sea is able to inject meaningfulness to whatever place or activity that is connected to it. Watching a sunset with a dear friend is a different experience than watching it with some random acquaintance. Although one does not speak too much, just knowing that the other is there makes the experience more meaningful. It is people we love who make our lives meaningful. That’s why experiences and activities connected to people one care about feel meaningful. And that’s why the meaning of life is to make oneself meaningful for other people. For me, the same applies to the sea. As it is like a dear friend to me, anything connected with the sea is more meaningful for me. Sense of belonging is a basic human need and I belong with the sea.
Best thing about traveling: Spontaneity and meeting new people
To balance the melancholy of the last post, here is an opposite story. Few days after the blackouts in the beach bar, I traveled onwards to León attracted by its reputation as the capital of intellectual and cultural life of Nicaragua. Whilst there, I went to eat alone in a local bar serving food even in the late hours Having finished my meal and reading a book while waiting for the check, a Norwegian guy from a big group approached me and invited me to join them to a night club they were heading to. Having no responsibilities or schedules, I naturally welcomed the idea. Two minutes later I was packed in a van with nineteen mostly Norwegian and hilariously drunk people.
We hit the night club where I happened to sit next to a local guy. We introduced ourselves to each other and I offered to buy him a beer (it is easy to be generous when a beer costs around 1$). He didn’t speak much English but I was surprised to be able to express quite many things with my hands and the lessons learned from my 5 days long intensive introductory course to Spanish (thanks Nica Spanish Language School!). He told me about a concert the next evening and invited me to join him and his friends for a pre-party at his home.
Next evening I showed the taxi-driver the address he had given me and we drove through the streets of León towards the destination. Here the streets have no names – really – so the address was quite literally ”red house 1 block south from the basketball field”. When the paved road ended and we drove in a muddy street surrounded by run-down houses in the evening darkness not lit by streetlights I began to wonder where was I really heading. Soon I was knocking on a door of a house that looked the most red of the one’s on the street hoping that I was in the right spot. Marti, my friend, opened and invited me in.
His friends spoke more English and we shared a few beers as well as listened to some local music that they introduced to me before heading for the concert. One guy’s name was Vladimir and when I asked about it he told that his mother had been in a leftist guerrilla army while she was pregnant and wanted to name her son after Vladimir Lenin. I thought what a hero I could have been on the schoolyard when children are boasting about their parents occupations if I could have said: ’My mom is a guerrilla soldier’. I found the dramatic history of Nicaragua become concrete when I realized that all the people I was meeting here had either themselves played a part in the fight against dictatorship or at least someone close to them had been involved.
So through traveling alone one opens up oneself to the potential of meeting new people. After some time of solitude one is usually quite ready to embrace all the opportunities for friendship. And with no prefixed schedule and no-one to answer to, one can freely cling to even the slightest straw of kindness and see how long it will take oneself. Many times in my travels I have for example met with a fellow solo traveler in a hostel, exchanged just a few words about our travels and plans with him or her before deciding to join forces for few days and few destinations. These have been intriguing forms of friendships: spending almost all one’s waking hours together with someone, sharing one’s lifestories to each other – and then parting and never hearing from each other again (although it might be that Facebook can actually change that last bit).
Also the openness and kindness of the locals have left me at awe all around the world. Be it an extravagant meal in a restaurant in Japan offered by a guy we just had met on the beach or community meal I was invited to participate in after visiting a local church in Rarotonga, people in every country seem to go out of their way to make sure that the visitor will remember the place and the people with warmness. I think that applies to every country I’ve visited – the only requirement is that one is somewhere where there are a bit less tourists and thus the locals have not grown too weary of them.
In fact, every time I think of the big and small acts of kindness offered to me, the stranger, by locals I am troubled by bad conscience I think how rarely I have offered a meal, a place to sleep or some smaller favor for a tourist visiting my home town. At home one is so reserved and stuck to one’s routines that one usually misses all these opportunities. It seems that one books one’s schedule so full of events that one simply don’t have the time available for being friendly. In building friendships ’It was nice to give you directions to the cathedral, Mr. Tourist, how about a lunch next Thursday at 13.30?’ is far less effective than ’In fact I can walk you to the cathedral myself. Let’s have a beer afterwards’. At home it feels that my life is already filled with so many friendships, projects and events that there is not room to meet with new people.
The reason to travel is therefore to get rid of the roles, responsibilities, schedules and other factors anchoring oneself to a more planned existence. Traveling offers one the possibility to question one’s way of living. Does good living really require so many responsibilities and predetermined activities as I am prone to gather for me? Or would less be more in terms of the room for spontaneity it would leave open for me? I really don’t know. When I get back I will most probably fill my calendar as full as it has been the last ten years. There just seems to be so many things in life that I simply can’t say no to. To counter this, I really have to remember to keep my plans as open as possible during these holidays. Too predetermined traveling would perhaps mean a larger quantity of experiences but would rip me off the opportunity to experience those adventures that can’t really be planned for. And usually they are qualitatively the most memorable moments of every trip. To balance the melancholy of the last post, here is an opposite story. Few days after the blackouts in the beach bar, I traveled onwards to León attracted by its reputation as the capital of intellectual and cultural life of Nicaragua. Whilst there, I went to eat alone in a local bar serving food even in the late hours Having finished my meal and reading a book while waiting for the check, a Norwegian guy from a big group approached me and invited me to join them to a night club they were heading to. Having no responsibilities or schedules, I naturally welcomed the idea. Two minutes later I was packed in a van with nineteen mostly Norwegian and hilariously drunk people.
We hit the night club where I happened to sit next to a local guy. We introduced ourselves to each other and I offered to buy him a beer (it is easy to be generous when a beer costs around 1$). He didn’t speak much English but I was surprised to be able to express quite many things with my hands and the lessons learned from my 5 days long intensive introductory course to Spanish (thanks Nica Spanish Language School!). He told me about a concert the next evening and invited me to join him and his friends for a pre-party at his home.
Next evening I showed the taxi-driver the address he had given me and we drove through the streets of León towards the destination. Here the streets have no names – really – so the address was quite literally ”red house 1 block south from the basketball field”. When the paved road ended and we drove in a muddy street surrounded by run-down houses in the evening darkness not lit by streetlights I began to wonder where was I really heading. Soon I was knocking on a door of a house that looked the most red of the one’s on the street hoping that I was in the right spot. Marti, my friend, opened and invited me in.
His friends spoke more English and we shared a few beers as well as listened to some local music that they introduced to me before heading for the concert. One guy’s name was Vladimir and when I asked about it he told that his mother had been in a leftist guerrilla army while she was pregnant and wanted to name her son after Vladimir Lenin. I thought what a hero I could have been on the schoolyard when children are boasting about their parents occupations if I could have said: ’My mom is a guerrilla soldier’. I found the dramatic history of Nicaragua become concrete when I realized that all the people I was meeting here had either themselves played a part in the fight against dictatorship or at least someone close to them had been involved.
So through traveling alone one opens up oneself to the potential of meeting new people. After some time of solitude one is usually quite ready to embrace all the opportunities for friendship. And with no prefixed schedule and no-one to answer to, one can freely cling to even the slightest straw of kindness and see how long it will take oneself. Many times in my travels I have for example met with a fellow solo traveler in a hostel, exchanged just a few words about our travels and plans with him or her before deciding to join forces for few days and few destinations. These have been intriguing forms of friendships: spending almost all one’s waking hours together with someone, sharing one’s lifestories to each other – and then parting and never hearing from each other again (although it might be that Facebook can actually change that last bit).
Also the openness and kindness of the locals have left me at awe all around the world. Be it an extravagant meal in a restaurant in Japan offered by a guy we just had met on the beach or community meal I was invited to participate in after visiting a local church in Rarotonga, people in every country seem to go out of their way to make sure that the visitor will remember the place and the people with warmness. I think that applies to every country I’ve visited – the only requirement is that one is somewhere where there are a bit less tourists and thus the locals have not grown too weary of them.
In fact, every time I think of the big and small acts of kindness offered to me, the stranger, by locals I am troubled by bad conscience I think how rarely I have offered a meal, a place to sleep or some smaller favor for a tourist visiting my home town. At home one is so reserved and stuck to one’s routines that one usually misses all these opportunities. It seems that one books one’s schedule so full of events that one simply don’t have the time available for being friendly. In building friendships ’It was nice to give you directions to the cathedral, Mr. Tourist, how about a lunch next Thursday at 13.30?’ is far less effective than ’In fact I can walk you to the cathedral myself. Let’s have a beer afterwards’. At home it feels that my life is already filled with so many friendships, projects and events that there is not room to meet with new people.
The reason to travel is therefore to get rid of the roles, responsibilities, schedules and other factors anchoring oneself to a more planned existence. Traveling offers one the possibility to question one’s way of living. Does good living really require so many responsibilities and predetermined activities as I am prone to gather for me? Or would less be more in terms of the room for spontaneity it would leave open for me? I really don’t know. When I get back I will most probably fill my calendar as full as it has been the last ten years. There just seems to be so many things in life that I simply can’t say no to. To counter this, I really have to remember to keep my plans as open as possible during these holidays. Too predetermined traveling would perhaps mean a larger quantity of experiences but would rip me off the opportunity to experience those adventures that can’t really be planned for. And usually they are qualitatively the most memorable moments of every trip.
Best thing about traveling: Being alone in a bar
The problem with being in your home town is that it is hard to spend time alone in a bar. Always when I try to do it, some friend or acquaintance pops into the same bar. As being alone in a bar is considered somewhat weird – as if you would not have any friends – I always have to come up with some inventive excuses to get out of the situation. Usually I claim that I-was-supposed-to-meet-my-friend-in-this-bar-but-now-he-called-that-he-is-in-another-bar-but-I-already-bought-my-drink-so-I-thought-I-might-as-well-drink-it-before-going. Then I finish my beer as quickly as I can and head towards another bar hoping to find some solitude there.
Why then to go to a bar alone? Because this enables one to feel a certain hovering form of connectedness with the human kind. It is hard to express this feeling but it resembles the melancholic form of mellowness you get when watching the stars alone at night. You feel yourself so small and merged with this vast universe. But in a bar instead of a sky full of stars there is a room full of people. Watching them happily interact, smile, laugh, dance and have a good time with each other one feels to be so far removed from their reality in one’s loneliness. At the same time watching their unique lives unfolding in front of oneself and being able to observe them while remaining anonymous fills oneself with a warm feeling. One has a somewhat paradoxical feeling of belonging to this crowd at the same time as one is far removed from it. One is an outsider at the same time as one feels to be connected.
On a Saturday night in San Juan del Sur, the surf capital of Nicaragua, I was engaged in this favorite past-time of mine. The music played high (isn’t it sad that nowadays you can travel to whatever country in the world but you can’t escape the same hits you here at your local nightclub?), the laid-back beach-side bar was packed, and the crowd was cheerful. All of a sudden a blackout stopped the music and shut the lights leaving us in darkness. The crowd reacted by cheering loudly. Suddenly the sense of community was intensified; we no longer were a random group of individuals happening to enjoy the music in the same bar but this surpising incident united us – we were experiencing something together. Soon the lights came back, the crowd cheered again and everything continued as normal. The same event happened a few more times during the evening – after all we were in Nicaragua – and the reaction was always the same.
The intensification of the sense of community in the face of a sudden interruption of the normal course of events reminded me of anthropologist Victor Turner’s concept of communitas. Starting with some observations of a few African tribes Turner argues that in every culture the forces of structure and communitas are in a constant juxtaposition against each other. During times of structure our interaction with the others takes place within a structured, differentiated, and often hierarchical system of politico-legal-economic positions. We are bound by certain roles, norms and expectations and thus are unable to reach to the other spontaneously and with the wholeness of our being. Some form of structure is necessary for the functioning of any society but luckily it leaves room for moments of communitas in which people are stripped off of all status differences and other norms that separate them from each other and are thus able to attend to the others unique and particular being and meet the other through a living mutual relation. These moments are especially prone to happen during liminal in-between situations characterized by the dislocation of established structures. What we experienced together in the bar during the black-out was clearly a tiny moment of liminality.
The waves of the dark ocean hitting the abandoned beach in the background, the relaxed bar with its light-hearted crowd in the foreground, me alone on the bar-desk with a cold beer in my hand and the lights out – I was truly enjoying my time and truly feeling connected with the world beyond myself!The problem with being in your home town is that it is hard to spend time alone in a bar. Always when I try to do it, some friend or acquaintance pops into the same bar. As being alone in a bar is considered somewhat weird – as if you would not have any friends – I always have to come up with some inventive excuses to get out of the situation. Usually I claim that I-was-supposed-to-meet-my-friend-in-this-bar-but-now-he-called-that-he-is-in-another-bar-but-I-already-bought-my-drink-so-I-thought-I-might-as-well-drink-it-before-going. Then I finish my beer as quickly as I can and head towards another bar hoping to find some solitude there.
Why then to go to a bar alone? Because this enables one to feel a certain hovering form of connectedness with the human kind. It is hard to express this feeling but it resembles the melancholic form of mellowness you get when watching the stars alone at night. You feel yourself so small and merged with this vast universe. But in a bar instead of a sky full of stars there is a room full of people. Watching them happily interact, smile, laugh, dance and have a good time with each other one feels to be so far removed from their reality in one’s loneliness. At the same time watching their unique lives unfolding in front of oneself and being able to observe them while remaining anonymous fills oneself with a warm feeling. One has a somewhat paradoxical feeling of belonging to this crowd at the same time as one is far removed from it. One is an outsider at the same time as one feels to be connected.
On a Saturday night in San Juan del Sur, the surf capital of Nicaragua, I was engaged in this favorite past-time of mine. The music played high (isn’t it sad that nowadays you can travel to whatever country in the world but you can’t escape the same hits you here at your local nightclub?), the laid-back beach-side bar was packed, and the crowd was cheerful. All of a sudden a blackout stopped the music and shut the lights leaving us in darkness. The crowd reacted by cheering loudly. Suddenly the sense of community was intensified; we no longer were a random group of individuals happening to enjoy the music in the same bar but this surpising incident united us – we were experiencing something together. Soon the lights came back, the crowd cheered again and everything continued as normal. The same event happened a few more times during the evening – after all we were in Nicaragua – and the reaction was always the same.
The intensification of the sense of community in the face of a sudden interruption of the normal course of events reminded me of anthropologist Victor Turner’s concept of communitas. Starting with some observations of a few African tribes Turner argues that in every culture the forces of structure and communitas are in a constant juxtaposition against each other. During times of structure our interaction with the others takes place within a structured, differentiated, and often hierarchical system of politico-legal-economic positions. We are bound by certain roles, norms and expectations and thus are unable to reach to the other spontaneously and with the wholeness of our being. Some form of structure is necessary for the functioning of any society but luckily it leaves room for moments of communitas in which people are stripped off of all status differences and other norms that separate them from each other and are thus able to attend to the others unique and particular being and meet the other through a living mutual relation. These moments are especially prone to happen during liminal in-between situations characterized by the dislocation of established structures. What we experienced together in the bar during the black-out was clearly a tiny moment of liminality.
The waves of the dark ocean hitting the abandoned beach in the background, the relaxed bar with its light-hearted crowd in the foreground, me alone on the bar-desk with a cold beer in my hand and the lights out – I was truly enjoying my time and truly feeling connected with the world beyond myself!
Leaving home and learning to appreciate what we have
The hardest part of a journey is usually the start. This is true in two senses of the word: Firstly, there are always so many excuses not to travel – the lack of money, risks ahead, study, work or family commitments and so forth – that many people never leave their home. These are obstacles that can always be arranged, if one just has a strong enough vision. Don’t take my word for it, ask Dervla Murphy who in addition to bicycling alone from Ireland to India in 1963 also travelled 1500 miles by foot in Peru with her nine-year old daughter. It must though be noted that her daughter Rachel rode the first six hundred miles with a pony before becoming a pedestrian.
Secondly, leaving is hard because one has to say farewell to so many dear people whom one doesn’t see for months. The last weeks before the trip are always filled with sad partings in which both realize how long it will be before we meet again. Should one say some kind words – or just shake hands in silence with a manly firmness? These are moments I have never learned to handle with elegance, I am always a bit unsure of how to get through them and how to really show the other how much I care about him or her.
One of the main reasons to travel, however, are precisely these good-byes. The human psychology is built in such a way that we often are unable to appreciate that which we have. We grow so used to having the good people around us and getting their attention and love that we start to take it for granted. We no longer see how much their presence really gives to us and in how many ways they enrich our lives. You do not learn to appreciate something before you don’t have it – and traveling is a way of departing from that which you have for a while and thus learn to appreciate it anew.
This is connected to one of the things that modern well-being psychologists have emphasized, namely the fact that in terms of happiness, ”the human mind is extraordinarily sensitive to changes in conditions, but not so sensitive to absolute levels” as Jonathan Haidt puts it. In other words, most of the things we have – especially our material wealth – don’t affect our happiness in the long term because we grow used to them. To change our happiness permanently we should not change the amount of things we have but our relation to the things we have. One can learn oneself to take a more appreciative attitude towards one’s life – for example through the simple exercise of once a week writing down five things one is gratetuf for. Simple as it may sound, this kind of exercises have been found to increase people’s satisfaction with life, their optimism and even their physical health.
Traveling – I argue – is one of the best ways to learn to appreciate more what one already has. As the travel writer Paoul Theroux notes: ”One of the greatest rewards of travel is the return home to the reassurance of family and old friends, familiar sights and homely comforts and your own bed.” But to get there, you first have to travel.The hardest part of a journey is usually the start. This is true in two senses of the word: Firstly, there are always so many excuses not to travel – the lack of money, risks ahead, study, work or family commitments and so forth – that many people never leave their home. These are obstacles that can always be arranged, if one just has a strong enough vision. Don’t take my word for it, ask Dervla Murphy who in addition to bicycling alone from Ireland to India in 1963 also travelled 1500 miles by foot in Peru with her nine-year old daughter. It must though be noted that her daughter Rachel rode the first six hundred miles with a pony before becoming a pedestrian.
Secondly, leaving is hard because one has to say farewell to so many dear people whom one doesn’t see for months. The last weeks before the trip are always filled with sad partings in which both realize how long it will be before we meet again. Should one say some kind words – or just shake hands in silence with a manly firmness? These are moments I have never learned to handle with elegance, I am always a bit unsure of how to get through them and how to really show the other how much I care about him or her.
One of the main reasons to travel, however, are precisely these good-byes. The human psychology is built in such a way that we often are unable to appreciate that which we have. We grow so used to having the good people around us and getting their attention and love that we start to take it for granted. We no longer see how much their presence really gives to us and in how many ways they enrich our lives. You do not learn to appreciate something before you don’t have it – and traveling is a way of departing from that which you have for a while and thus learn to appreciate it anew.
This is connected to one of the things that modern well-being psychologists have emphasized, namely the fact that in terms of happiness, ”the human mind is extraordinarily sensitive to changes in conditions, but not so sensitive to absolute levels” as Jonathan Haidt puts it. In other words, most of the things we have – especially our material wealth – don’t affect our happiness in the long term because we grow used to them. To change our happiness permanently we should not change the amount of things we have but our relation to the things we have. One can learn oneself to take a more appreciative attitude towards one’s life – for example through the simple exercise of once a week writing down five things one is gratetuf for. Simple as it may sound, this kind of exercises have been found to increase people’s satisfaction with life, their optimism and even their physical health.
Traveling – I argue – is one of the best ways to learn to appreciate more what one already has. As the travel writer Paoul Theroux notes: ”One of the greatest rewards of travel is the return home to the reassurance of family and old friends, familiar sights and homely comforts and your own bed.” But to get there, you first have to travel.
The beginning of a journey
Sometimes a man has to go. Sometimes a man needs a purpose to go. I am going to Central America, to Costa Rica and Nicaragua. The purpose of my journey is to learn more about the local culture, the way they live their lives and the way they think about vital issues such as happiness, morality and good life.
What makes Costa Ricans happy, what is their measure of success? What kind of attitudes do Nicaraguans have towards life’s big issues: family, work, friendship and death? What kind of things do they value, what is sacred for them? And of course: What can we learn about our own lives and our own deeply-held values and attitudes by comparing them with the Central-American culture? In other words, what can we learn from them in terms of how to live a good life ourselves? These are the questions I will be examining.
My mission in life is to explore novel ways of thinking that enable people to better understand how to live their life in a good way. I aim to find fruitful ways to answer the ancient question about what is good life and how to live one’s life. The journey I will now be taking is a part of this mission. Through absorbing myself to the Central American culture for a couple of months I hope to widen my perspective and thus be able to think about these basic questions in a more open and wide-reaching way.
This blog will be a report of this journey. I hope to give the reader two things: (1) To broaden her or his perspective about what good life could be about. (2) To give practical insights into how to live a better life within one’s own life-situation, whatever that situation is.
How then to live your life? Truth to be told, there is no such thing as one correct way of living. Everyone must carve their own path. As Zarathustra said:
”This is just my way, where is yours?” Thus did I answer to those who asked me ”the way.” For the way – it does not not exist!
Sometimes a man has to go. Sometimes a man needs a purpose to go. I am going to Central America, to Costa Rica and Nicaragua. The purpose of my journey is to learn more about the local culture, the way they live their lives and the way they think about vital issues such as happiness, morality and good life.
What makes Costa Ricans happy, what is their measure of success? What kind of attitudes do Nicaraguans have towards life’s big issues: family, work, friendship and death? What kind of things do they value, what is sacred for them? And of course: What can we learn about our own lives and our own deeply-held values and attitudes by comparing them with the Central-American culture? In other words, what can we learn from them in terms of how to live a good life ourselves? These are the questions I will be exploring.
My mission in life is to explore novel ways of thinking that enable people to better understand how to live their life in a good way. I aim to find fruitful ways to answer the ancient question about what is good life and how to live one’s life. The journey I will now be taking is a part of this mission. Through absorbing myself to the Central American culture for a couple of months I hope to widen my perspective and thus be able to think about these basic questions in a more open and wide-reaching way.
This blog will be a report of this journey. I hope to give the reader two things: (1) To broaden her or his perspective about what good life could be about. (2) To give practical insights into how to live a better life within one’s own life-situation, whatever that situation is.
How then to live your life? Truth to be told, there is no such thing as one correct way of living. Everyone must carve their own path. As Zarathustra said:
”This is just my way, where is yours?” Thus did I answer to those who asked me for ”the way.” For the way – it does not not exist!
Frank Martela 