Applause for Uncertainty

Uncertainty is a common companion for a traveler and people can react to this companion in different ways. I’d consider myself to be a somewhat easygoing traveler. I’m by no means the zen master of travel but I’d say that I scored high marks in a few advanced courses during my trip through South America. When I got back, I started to think about why I had this approach to the curveballs that travel throws at you. My mind kept drifting back to the very first time I left the United States, to the orange skies of Malawi.

Malawi was a cornerstone experience for me. I was young and eager to expand my understanding of the world. I don’t think it was some grand, clichéd moment of enlightenment, though. For years, everyone in my family had told stories about the many ways in which we can choose to engage with the world. The stories were what enlightened me, but they also gave me a great hunger for more understanding.

Malawi fed that hunger. It was my first contact with something so different yet so the same to what I knew. Throughout the process, my mom and sister were my guides for sorting through my experience. I was close with my mom that summer, working at her side to help educate the hospital staff in physical therapy, but I was even closer with my sister. We spent a lot of time together in high school and even though it had been a few years since we had been around each other for a long stretch of time, we fell back into the unique rhythm only a brother and sister can have.

We worked side by side on projects. We played soccer with the kids until the darkness sent us home. We stayed up late watching bootleg DVDs and drinking hot chocolate. We decided together to become “tea people” when our stash of hot chocolate powder ran out.

Most of all, I think Elizabeth taught me how to react to uncertainty. Malawi is a friendly, beautiful place, but a place of funny uncertainty. You have to be okay with all sorts of twists and turns. When things did veer away from the expected, I would look to my sister to see how to react and what I saw was serenity and joy. What I learned from her in Malawi I took with me as I continued to travel in the years to come.

As William Carlos Williams said, ‘The proper response to life is applause.“ So, instead of shouts of anger and frustration at the unpredictability, I learned that the right response to uncertainty is to applaud, to embrace it and treat it like music. The world is always playing some sort of improvised jazz. Go ahead, clap. Then, play along.

Asking for Directions

People always struggle to ask for directions and I think that’s because to ask for directions is to tell the world that you don’t know. It is to admit that you had a plan and that so far, your plan has failed. To ask for directions is to humble oneself. These things aren’t the easiest to do willingly, so we resist it.

When I arrived in Quito, I decided I would take the bus into the city and then try to figure out how to use the bus system to get to my hostel. I hadn’t really done the necessary research, so the first thing I did after getting off the plane was to ask someone how to get into the city. Then ask someone whether I wanted to go to the North terminal or the South Terminal. With a little bit of knowledge in my pocket, I made my way into the city.

When I got to the North terminal, I asked how much the fare cost, then asked how to get to San Blas. When I followed the man’s instructions, I tried to confirm that the line I was in was correct with the man next to me. No, it’s over there, he said. I followed his fingers, got in a line, and tried to confirm again. No, it’s those trolleys over there, she said. I felt like a pinball in the game This Guy Has No Idea What He’s Doing. I went to the trolley line and got on the next one. I asked the conductor if I was on the right one. He said no, but he would help me get to where I was going if I stayed on.

We got to a new station on the trolley and the conductor err… conducted me to a transfer point. I confirmed successfully in line there that it was heading in the right direction. I rode the packed bus to my hostel.

The whole ordeal, from plane to hostel door, took three hours. It was rush hour on a Friday and everyone was going everywhere. The ordeal was exhausting, but not because of the crowded buses or the amount of time it took. It wore me out because it was a constant reminder of how much I don’t know.

Honestly, to confront my pride and admit my ignorance is a daily struggle for me. More than money, I find that knowledge is an alluring currency for me and laying bare my poverty shakes me. While it’s difficult, I also think it’s incredibly important that we are transparent in our intellectual humility. To suppose that we know everything is to close off the possibility of actually enriching our knowledge and learning more. To give the world the effort that the whole show demands, we need to shed our egos and embrace intellectual humility.

We are learning more and more that certain mental traits can be strengthened through action. For example, a study finds that through meditation we can cultivate our capacity for empathy. I see intellectual humility as just another mental trait for development. Perhaps asking for directions is a way of strengthening that muscle. So if you see me asking for directions, maybe I’m not lost. Maybe I’m on my way.

Usted a Tú

In the north of Colombia, I completed a five day trek through the jungle to get to La Ciudad Perdida (“The Lost City”), a sacred site of the indigenous people in the region. I ended up with a small group: a couple from Belgium (Marie and Greg), a doctor from Bogota (Carlos), a guide from the local Wiwa tribe (Lorenzo), and a talented chef (Josè). We were a good crew: friendly, curious, and determined to meet the challenges that the jungle offered.

Lorenzo is a guy with a quiet energy who occasionally flashes a big, heartwarming smile. He’s the kind of person that you immediately want to be friends with. He only spoke Spanish, so that gave me a lot of opportunities for practice. At the beginning, we mostly asked Lorenzo questions. We were curious about the local culture and wanted to get to know him.

In Spanish, there are two ways of saying “you”: usted, which is formal, and tú, which is familiar. (There is actually some more nuance than this. If, like me, you’re crazy, dive down this Wikipedia rabbit hole.) It’s common to begin your relationship with a new person using usted and then to transition to tú as you become more familiar. There are some cases where usted persists; for example, if you want to show respect or it is some kind of service or customer relationship. Colombian Spanish is traditionally more formal, so usted seems to stick around a little longer than other places. As a result of this delayed transition, the point where someone does switch becomes that more interesting.

Lorenzo eventually started asking us questions. What is dancing like in your country? How many people live there? What do you study? All in the “usted” form. As the days went by, Lorenzo would smile a bit more and give us brief glimpses of a very dry humor.

Then, a change. He asked a question using the “tú” form. This might seem wholly unremarkable. Maybe it is. Maybe there are equivalents in English. But to witness the transformation of a relationship - with the “you” form as the focal point - was absolutely fascinating. The decision to use “tú” says that there is some level of familiarity and comfort with the other person. It’s almost like an affirmation of a growing relationship.

On the way back from the Lost City, I started to run a bit on the downhills. The quickening pace was a welcomed change. Lorenzo told me that he likes to run sometimes, too, and we found ourselves lagging behind the others on the very last day. He looked at me and asked if I wanted to run up the massive hill before us. I grinned and nodded and we started the slog up the hill. We reached a plateau and almost as if in sync, immediately stopped, laughing at the difficulty.

Ultimately, our languages are just symbols: we are conveying meaning by making sounds with our mouth or moving our body in a certain way. The meanings we attach to words like “tú” and “usted” are completely arbitrary. Yet, there is real value there, created out of thin air. We can’t forget to pause and notice it.

Get It Down

When constructing my packing list, I briefly considered taking a Bluetooth keyboard. I was planning on writing while traveling and thought that it was a no-brainer. Then, I wondered if I could ditch the physical keyboard and write on virtual ones. It would be certainly be lighter and make the process of writing a little less fussy. Could I do without?

Turns out, I could. I’ve written quite a bit in the last three months. The vast majority of it was typed up by my fingers on my iPhone. In fact, I think the constraint of the iPhone helped me: it forced my writing to be more concise. I composed posts on packed buses, lounging in hammocks, sprawled under the shade of trees, and waiting for food at restaurants. Everywhere - and every moment - was a chance for creation.

There is a kind of obsession with the tools that we use to do things. Productivity and creativity often fall victim to this obsession. There seems to be a mysticism surrounding the work that we do and I’ve become all too familiar with the cult of specificity surrounding the written word. This writing app. That fountain pen. This time of day. That sanctioned amount of isolation.

No, to write, you just need an idea and somewhere to put it. Pen and paper during a quiet moment at work. The Notes app on your iPhone in the stumbling moments after a deep sleep. The back of your airplane ticket as you wait in line for coffee. Words are apathetic to how they greet the world, but they do care that you get them down. At the end of the day, that is writing. Don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise.

Pack Light, Go Fast 2.0

When I was planning my trip, I came across an intriguing article about an OkCupid “date” where a pair traveled for three weeks without any stuff. I thought it was such a cool idea. I had packed light before when I studied abroad and wanted to do so again for my South America trip, but this made me challenge myself.

After a bit of tweaking, I created a list that I felt was just enough.

2 x Icebreaker merino wool t-shirt

1 x regular cotton t-shirt

1 x pair of long trekking pants

1 x pair of trekking shorts

1 x pair of mesh athletic shorts

4 x pair of Smartwool socks (3 x thin; 1 x thick)

4 x Ex-Officio boxer briefs

1 x North Face pull-over

1 x Patagonia fleece pull-over

1 x North Face rain jacket

1 x Salomom trekking shoes

1 x cheap flip-flops

Toiletries / small amount of medicine / misc stuff

iPad mini, iPhone, headphones, and charger

I took a gander at my old Kelty backpack and it looked eager for the job. It all fit with plenty of room to spare. (I quickly ditched the Spanish dictionary for spontaenous practice.)

For the most part, this list hasn’t changed. I swapped out the fleece for an alpaca sweater in Peru (a great buy) and occasionally picked up a small item with temporary utility (a cheap pair wool gloves, say). I’ve been everywhere from beaches to snow-tipped mountains and have been able to layer up or strip down to match the climate. At first, I thought having such a small pack for so long would be a challenge but not once have I thought, “I wish I brought X”. We underestimate our ability to adapt and find what we need.

In truth, the lightness has been a blessing. I’ve found that packing light has kept my mental space pretty light. When all your possessions (at least for a three month stretch) fit in a daypack, the cognitive weight of stuff really disappears. There’s not really anything for you to worry about. Just grab your pack and go find adventure. Even in my previous experience packing light, I couldn’t really do that. Going from two bags to one really does make a difference.

It’s almost hard to explain the freedom that it can bring you. I touched on it briefly in the past. I can only encourage you to try it out. When you hop off a bus and hit the road while everyone waits for the cargo hold to unload, you’ll know. When you have to hitchhike and then hop into a flatbed filled with people and can toss your pack to someone for a hot second as you jump in, you’ll know. When you decide to walk two hours from the bus station through the city, you’ll know. When you move quickly through a crowd, you’ll know.

Pack light, go fast.

Blank Page Mentality

I finished one of my Field Notes the other day. It’s a small notebook that can fit in your pocket and I found myself reaching for it often in past months.

Inside is a hodgepodge, an ink and paper manifestation of my brain. Among the 48 pages, you can find random thoughts, scaffolding for future writing, contact details of people I’ve met, Spanish words I want to look up, addresses of hostels where I’ve stayed, terrible poetry, okay poetry, to-do lists, sketches, travel plans, mini journal entries, different brewing methods for coffee, budgeting, and life plans.

Flipping through the pages is like meeting my past self and having a conversation. I can pinpoint where I filled in the pages: sitting at cafés, laying on grassy knolls, lounging on park benches, and laying on beds. I can almost relive the moment where I scribbled each illegible word.

There is incredible power in having a little notebook in your back pocket with a trusted pen. At any moment, you can flip to a blank page, and those blank pages represent infinite possibility. And, because I think something like Field Notes are focused on a basic, inviting design, there’s no friction between you and the next idea or note.

Filling up another Field Notes and being reminded of its utility and potential made me wonder if I’m doing my best to keep its mental equivalent in my back pocket.

Law school will, if I could guess, be a lot about drawing neat boxes of understanding. I think Field Notes - and notebooks in general - represent almost the opposite: lots of freedom from constraints. It’s not that I’m dreading building a solid foundation of legal knowledge, it’s that I know that it’s important to have the “blank page mentality” as part of your toolkit for problem solving.

I’m starting a new Field Notes, physical and mental. I can’t wait for the next blank page.

Doing Nothing

Forget Kant, Mill, and Aristotle. Calvin (the mischievous boy, not John) and Hobbes (the tiger, not Thomas) are the modern era’s philosophers. I devoured C&H as a kid and have found that far from becoming less relevant, the comic strip had become more so.

To illustrate why, let’s look at one of my all-time favorites:

Replace “summer” with “three month trip through South America”. Well, I suppose summer is almost over — let’s keep it as is.

I got to the sleepy town of Salento after trekking through the jungle in northern Colombia for five hot, sticky, tough, but rewarding days. I quickly decided that I was ready for a change of pace.

There’s a tendency when traveling to want to chase after the next adventure. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, but I have a hunch that Calvin is on to something. Sometimes we need a whole lot of nothing and there never feels like enough time for it. In Salento, I was going to make time for it.

It’s easy to forget that when the world is racing so fast that there’s a quiet story unfolding patiently in the background. I decided that I was going to stay still and try to watch it. So, after I did a much anticipated tour of a coffee finca and a beautiful hike in the Valle de Cocora, I settled into the nothing.

Boy, did it feel good. I would wake pretty early and grab a mug of fresh coffee from the nearby finca. Sometimes I would just sit with the cup and sip contently. Often I would read, and, if the mood struck me, write.

After a long stretch of missing my daily meditation practice and trying to find mindfulness in other ways, I found the space to begin again amidst the nothing. I moved a chair to a nice spot with a view of the valley and sat there often, rhythmically breathing in and out in a powerful yet simple ritual.

At some point in the morning, I would migrate to the hammock and carry on as before: coffee, reading, writing. Every once and a while, I would just lay back. Do nothing.

Later, I would get lunch. As the coffee was the only thing to sustain me in the morning, I was normally pretty hungry. I found a regular spot that would only have two sets of three options:

trucha / pollo / chorizo

verduras / frijoles / espagetti

It came with soup, a small banana, fresh juice, rice, salad, two different type of fried corn, and plantains. It was a no-frills spot and always delicious, and quickly my favorite became favorite trucha and frijoles. I tried to eat slow and enjoy all the flavors.

After lunch I would often walk up the hill and flights of stares to the Mirador - the lookout point. You could sit under the shade of a tree and look over the town in one direction and into the valley the next. It was a great place to do nothing.

Back at the hostel, I would grab another cup of coffee and settle in again. The afternoons were my favorite for thinking, and I spent a lot of time working through the next few chapters of my life (they’re currently only drafts). Soon enough, the light would be race to the horizon with the sunset and I would walk down the road to a raised hill and soak it in.

The evening would unwind quietly. I would go out for a small dinner - I was normally pretty full from lunch - and make awesome decisions like having a ice cream sundae brownie with peanut butter. Before I knew it, I would be ready to sleep. What beautiful days of nothing!

Some might view all this nothing as a waste, but I would beg to differ. I wrote that I wanted to travel to grow my soul, and I’m convinced that my soul grew in the quiet nothing those days in Salento. It’s almost like I had been filling it with so much experience these past months that it needed a moment to take it all in. When I get home, I have to remember that feeling of growth that pause gives. I have to make the space for nothing.

The Mindfulness Exchange

Exploring the practice of meditation has been one of the best things I’ve ever done for myself. I think it’s crazy that we pay so much attention to the physical component of health while the mental side of it is so neglected. I initially looked into meditation as something to simply hone my focus, but I quickly found its potential as a foundational habit. I stuck to it for about a year.

However, I’ve found it incredibly difficult to meditate regularly while traveling. I’m still a beginner and I’ve found that committing to the practice is easiest when I’m in a stable and predictable environment that offers a degree of privacy. My experiences traveling so far have been the exact opposite, filled with navigating a changing and unpredictable landscape and a noticeable lack of privacy.

As a result, I’ve thought a lot about how to reclaim some mindfulness in my day to day life. Occasionally, I find a quiet park, inviting cathedral, or secluded spot to sit and mediate. For the most part, though, I’ve been on the move, surrounded by people and a flurry of activity. My solution to this challenge has been to think about the idea of a mindfulness exchange.

The way I see it, every moment offers a chance to be mindful. Eating a meal, drinking a cup of coffee, walking, bearing witness to breathtaking vistas, conversation: they all are chances be in present with the moment. If you just try to focus on just that moment, a whole spectrum of experience is unlocked. I have been trying to take advantage of these opportunities throughout each day. Every time I do, I’m exchanging a moment of hurry and distraction for one of mindfulness.

On good days, I’ve made this exchange countless times and I feel light and engaged with the world around me. It carves out a really special mental space for introspection, a priceless thing to have amidst travel. On bad days, I rush through experiences with abandon and miss the chance to absorb what’s around me. The best thing I can do on those bad days is to begin the next day with a blank slate. There is always tomorrow.

Eventually, I got to a place - Salento, Colombia - where I was able to find the space to begin my meditation practice again. But even if I fall off the wagon again, I will have this idea of the mindfulness exchange. Actually, if I stay on the wagon I will keep it in mind as well. Even in a time of immense excitement, one can find a little bit of calm with the mindfulness exchange. Take a moment. Take a breath. I promise it’s worth it.

Steak

Dear (seemingly entire) Argentinian cow I just ate,

I had heard so much about you before we met. Friends had told me you were delicious, unwieldily, unworldly. I thought their claims were overblown. I was wrong.

You were truly wonderful. From the first bite to the last you assaulted my taste buds with unrelenting vigor. I must admit: I was intimated by your size. But, committing to the challenge and spectacle, I found it agreeable.

I feel as if your immensity is what drives most conversation about you. This is an incredible disservice to everything you have to offer. Your crisp outer shell laced with salt gives way to delectable soft insides. You wear the meaty pinks well, with pride. The ridges of thick fat paint the rest of your mass with irresistible juice.

It is sad to think that you and a vegetarian may never meet. I greatly respect their stalwart protest against what is likely a grave offense in this world. Still, I wish for another world where the two of you might be acquaintances.

Your friends, the rich wine and bright salad, were great company as well. You three make quite a party and I completely understand the affection you have for one another.

I won’t forget this first night we met, among the shiny silverware in a restaurant in Mendoza. As I walk through the quiet streets in a deepening evening, I will digest this evening’s activities with great fondness.

I hope we visit one another soon.

Regards, Daniel

(I wrote this on June 24 in my journal.)

The Bend

This past week, I visited the Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos (Museum of Memory and Human Rights) in Santiago. The museum is a way for Chile to remember the atrocities of the Pinochet era and the story of how the country fought back. I spent hours meandering through the space learning about Chile’s recent past.

I went with a recently-made friend from Chile. Afterwards, she asked me what I thought having visited the museum. I think that when confronted with great tragedy, there is the chance that our reaction to its evil and pain leaves us with a dark opinion of humanity. This pessimistic view is understandable as it is tough for optimism to endure when you encounter stories of murder, torture, rape, censorship, terror, and despair.

Given that, something about this picture is incomplete. It’s lacking our response to tragedy. One floor of the museum contained sobering stories of torture and oppression, but the next floor told the story of the awakening of Chilean resistance and the campaign to remove Pinochet.

The floor detailing the response to the horror of Pinochet was what I kept coming back to after the visit. At the beginning of the museum, there was footage of La Moneda (the presidential palace) under siege at the start of the coup, at once both a literal and symbolic destruction of the rule of law. I listened to President Allende’s final speech to the Chilean people; you could hear the world crumbling outside. His resolute protest was eerily profound and prophetic. When I made it to the floor about the revolution, it felt like Allende’s words had been laying dormant for all those years, waiting to capture the hearts and minds of an oppressed people. It was so powerful.

Our response to tragedy is what defines us. It is not the dictators and their institutions of fear. It is not the genocides and their senseless violence. It is not the terror of an unsafe world. It is our decision to speak truth to power, to engage in the brutal struggle for a better world. That’s what I came out with after walking through the museum. As Martin Luther King Jr. noted, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” I love that idea. Yes, we stumble, heavy and often. One doesn’t have to look far to see how much more we have to go. But, we will, slowly but surely, play a part in that great bending. If there’s anything I know, it’s that. If there’s anything we must believe in, it’s that: the dogged, relentless response of the human spirit.