What Kind of Traveler Are You?

By Aid

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

    A mad, but brilliant, scientist has invented a teleporter that can allow you to live anywhere you want, and travel through infinite variations of that life through different dimensions. You can sort through these different dimensions with all their different life circumstances until you find the dimension in which you are living a life you think is perfect. Any life, anywhere, with anything, and anyone, you are given a chance to pick what you want. Imagine what that life would be like. Hold and develop that thought as you continue reading. Allow yourself to change your mind if you like, allow yourself to let go and come back to different aspects of it as you react to what you read.

    Your life journey and where you find yourself in it is molded by a host of what many would characterize as external (meaning external to what you might consider “yourself”) and internal (meaning coming from within yourself) influences. Among these influences are: Desires, Expectations, Beliefs, Values, Identity, World View (i.e. how you perceive ‘reality’ time, space and your surroundings), Neurological Wiring (i.e. your brain’s conditioning, traumas, experiences, and the chemical soup your brain is swimming in), and Attitude and Emotional States. This is by no means an exhaustive list. All of these things are real, whether they exist in an empirically measurable way, or in a more figurative or metaphorical way. Not only do they all exist, they also drive the vast majority of your choices and much of how you navigate your life journey. Bring your attention to these things and how they exist in you. Can you think of the last time one of these things pushed you into making a choice? Which one won out? Here’s a surprise: you are reading this right now, because of at least one of these influencing factors.

    By becoming aware of these different life-influencing factors, you are taking a further step towards reclaiming your life journey. There are all kinds of worksheets and activities you can engage in by yourself to help you examine these influences, and articulate what they are. Keeping a daily journal, and routine meditation can be valuable tools that can support this. You can also examine these influences with other interlocutors in a group, or in a one on one session of therapy or life-coaching. There is no one specific way to do it, but it is an on-going activity (i.e. you will never cease finding influences in your life). Now, it is important to acknowledge the following: it can actually be very hard to separate one influencing factor from another, and it can be even more difficult to fit all these influences into the strict dichotomy of what exists externally and internally.

    For example, what you desire is going to be partially shaped by what you are aware of (that comes from your world view), what you believe is attainable (your expectations), what you believe you should have (your belief system and your identity), whether you feel like pursuing it (your emotional state and attitude as well as the chemicals in your brain), and how you believe it will change your current state of being. How you believe something will change your current state of being, or where you are in your life right now, will be affected by all the influences mentioned on the prior page. When you think about this, consider your faculties such as your reason, imagination, and especially ‘common sense.’ Are any of these really yours? What part of these things did you “bring to the table” so to speak?

    When you think about it, these faculties of reason, imagination, and common sense are things you strongly associate with yourself, but they are very much the product of things that came to you externally, yet you cannot help the feeling that they reside inside you and emanate from the part that is uniquely you: the traveler.

    The next thing you can choose to acknowledge is this: you, the traveler moving through life, are not defined by any singular influencing factor, nor any combination of them. These influences are artificial, created by the world surrounding us, that we are also part of. So many people go through their journey allowing these different influences to define them at different points of their life without a second thought. This does not make them bad or foolish. It makes them very normal. Yet, that cannot help but lead to a disappointing conclusion: the majority of people are not really living their own lives, or following their own path.

    This should raise a question though: what is the value of understanding that we are not the authors of so many aspects of our life journeys? Can’t you live a good life that is also normal, and largely defined by things that do not genuinely come from yourself? Like playing the hero character in a play that someone else has written? Sure, many normal people live fine lives. The problem with living a life that is not authentic to yourself does not arise when that life is going well. The problem arises when that life begins to break down. Consider a young woman who grew up in a family that has a long line of well-respected doctors. This young woman is passionate about movies and the arts, but is smart enough to go through medical school. She goes to medical school, becomes a doctor, and after 10 years of practicing, she is bored. She sees nothing but the routine in what she does, and soon begins to dread going to work when she wakes up in the morning. This aversion to her own life comes from a craving for a type of fulfillment she has not experienced yet. That is to say, she has had a fulfilling life in many respects, but not the ones that really mattered, not the type that would make her wake up every morning, after 10 years of doing something, and feel like she was continuing on a great adventure.

    Dissatisfaction with one’s lot in life, the type that leads to hating life and one’s journey through it, is unfortunately as common as individuals leading lives that are not their own. Do you see the connection? 

    So normal folks, when they become miserable, become really miserable. How is that misery different from someone who sets out to live their own life, a heroic traveller who defines his own journey and pursues it as an adventure, only to realize that the journey he set out on has failed? Think of an entrepreneur who has, what he thinks at least is, a great idea. He develops a business plan, does his research, learns from others in similar fields, and creates his own business. One day, the things or services he was selling just are not in demand anymore. He may even be in debt from pursuing his dream. How is that misery any different from the misery of someone who discovers they are not living an authentic life?

    There is at least one difference. With the failure that can follow an attempt at authentic living, there is solace in the knowledge that one created that life of their own accord, and has the power to also change that life of their own accord. There is an escape hatch that dormant travelers do not possess, because they never took the first step of creating something of their own in the first place. Hence, the doctor may enter a state in which life is alway chaos and crisis, yet the entrepreneur understands that there are other paths and opportunities to be had, and he has the will to attain them.

    So, how does one figure out what comes from him/herself, and what is truly authentic? In understanding that many of the influences that push and pull you have been placed on you and instilled in you, you can choose to take this creative step: reclaim your influences, and decide what you will allow to continue to pull and push you on your path, and what influences you will leave behind.

    One must keep in mind: just because you were given an influence does not mean that it is a bad influence. Whether you continue to let it influence you after becoming aware of it is key. Hence, if you were taught to brush your teeth twice a day, and do so out of daily habit, that’s fine. The fact that you do that out of habit by itself does not make it an undesirable activity. Hence, it is ok to continue to brush your teeth twice a day after you realize that you have been doing so out of habit. In fact, I would strongly recommend it.

    But what about other influences? Perhaps you have trouble committing in relationships, or don’t pursue career opportunities, or struggle with self-doubt, or persist in believing things about yourself and life that end up limiting your journey. In seeking the origin of these influencing factors and ideas in your life, you will discover that these things, although they are real and they exist, do not have to define you. You can give yourself permission to ask the kinds of questions many refuse to consider, such as: “What if that idea is not true? What if I do not have to do that? Who does that idea really serve? What if that’s not me? How does that idea lead me to affect others and how might that affect my journey? What if that is not how the world works?”

    You, through your own powers of thought and introspection, can begin to doubt the influences that caused you to doubt yourself. And, gradually, one can begin to put thoughts into action. Through careful consideration and self-awareness, you can decide “Next time, when I feel this way, I won’t do that. I will try this instead.” That does not mean that all your future actions and choices will be successful. However, they will be your own, and you will know that you can try something differently the next time life presents you with an opportunity to act. That is the way of the heroic traveler. Every step on your path belongs to you, and you choose what defines you.