Directions Are For Cowards: Part 1

Last I posted I wrote of being familiar with the world and needing to find something new.  While I stand by this idea, I feel something was lacking.  Rather than becoming familiar with how the world is, it is more likely, I have limited my perception and slipped into viewing the world through too narrow a lense.  This is something we all do and to no fault of our own.  Learning HOW to see what we are looking at takes time just like everything else, and perspective is an ever evolving thing.

More Recently:
I left Chattanooga yesterday and made it about an hour and a half outside of St. Louis before calling it a night.  These long drives, solo across the country are more time to reflect than most people are willing to take, and without exception usually drive one mad!  So far so good on this one though.  It seems I am growing accustomed to them.  I am just across the border in Nebraska now and should arrive in Utah some time tomorrow if I keep up the pace.  Snow reports for the week look great and I can't wait to see what the terrain is like!

Something New

From the word “GO!” there has been a small arsenal of inquiries people have used to feel our way through the world: who, what, when, where, how, and why. A sense of self, separateness from other objects is enough to start answering who. What, quite frankly turns out to be a state of confusion, and when, is a construct of our own fabrication. The questions of why and how, are the real show stoppers, the ones that have been egging us on from time immemorial. But an existential debate is not what I am after today.


For some time I’ve held that mystery is an integral part of life’s appeal, that it is with an element of the unknown that the world keeps us entertained, keeps us excited about getting out of bed in the morning. And here a quarter of the way through an average life span I feel familiar with much of the world. Every time you experience something new and wonderful, experience that since of awe for the world around you, it becomes more and more difficult to return the next time. Keeping hold of that since of awe and wonder is what defines my life here and now. I am looking for the next revelation, the new thought. I am searching for “the new,” something that surprises, astonishes, utterly baffles me! I am looking for things I can’t explain, things and feelings for which there are no explanations to be had, something new under the sun.

This is what I mean when I tell myself “I have no choice in traveling.” I am compelled to discover, not necessarily to answer the hows and the whys, but to explore. Out of nothing I was set spinning into existence disoriented. I am not traveling the world solely for pleasure, but exploring it for what it is. There may be no great secret to be found, no “the way things are,” but there are plenty of ways to enjoy the view.