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Mission Statement

"A good traveler has no fixed plans,
and is not intent on arriving."
~Lao Tzu (570-490 B.C.)~

"The true traveler is he who goes on foot,
and even then,
he sits down a lot of the time."
~Colette, Paris From My Window, 1944~

All that is written here in italics is an older me writing three years after this journey began who now reacts to my earlier statements.

My goal is to improve myself by developing a wide perspective through self-analysis and deep contact with other cultures.

That is how mission statements are usually written. Let me explain what I really mean. I think that at home I have a environment that was shaped over time, unthinkingly, with neither good not bad intentions, strongly influenced by other people's value judgements and belief structures, and not aimed towards real growth.

Hmmmm, I would now say that my home envronment throughout my life leading up to this journey was created by myself and my parents to the best of their knowlege with very good intentions such as my flowering into a happy and productive member of society. I think that when I originally wrote the above I had just realized that they might have done better, much better, or that the amount of concious thought and investigation they invested in my upbringing (and their approach to child-rearing) was much less than what I would have done for myself. So basically I am bashing my parents a bit here and why that should have been part of my mission statement I cannot fathom now.

Some men come from a small village that they leave and never return to saying to their city friends - "the people of my village live in ignorance, so few of them are educated, there is no development there, no electricity, you have to walk everywhere, life is hard and there I have no opportunities to improve my life." Perhaps this type of fellow does not realize the value of the peacefulness of the village, perhaps he does not remember the easy honesty of the men and women there, perhaps he does not remember how fresh the food tastes when it was just plucked from the field minutes before it is cooked.

To put things in retro-perspective I was waxing poetic in that last sentence acter just coming off my impressions from hiking through Nepal and observing the differences between different villages and micro-cultures where I discovered a kind of recurring character I would meet in different places who did not appreciate what was good about his home.

My home environment also has problems born of my own ignorance but it also has all the tools I need to build a better life there. I believe that I can work conciously to create an environment that fosters growth, energizes me, yields fruit and smoothes out a world of worry into peace and tanquility.

I now beleive that the tools I need to "build a better life" are all internal. The one external factor is being near to my family. Coincidentally during the three years I have been on this trip my family has all 'moved away from home:' with my brother going to Colorado then Boston and my sister and parents moving to Los Angeles. So the definition of "home" has been in constant flux.

This means being very careful about who I let close enough into my life that I can let my guard down and allow them to influence me in the confidence that they are a positive force towards my growth. In any case I am learning as I travel how many of my assumptions about what is good and bad in life, satisfactory and unsatisfactory, necessary and unnecessary, are just cultural assumptions not based on logic or even on the fruit of my own experience.

I also currently beleive that all value judgements about what is good and bad are based either on experience OR they are inhereted assumptions. The fact that they have been inhereted does not mean that they are wrong, however. Everything has to be looked at on a case by case basis. Also, I do not anymore think that it is necessary to safeguard myself against bad friends (as Bhudda warned against) since I have lately developed a new way of reacting to the people I meet: sitting down in joy with those who are delicious beings and looking pretty obviously bored or "lets do the business we have to do" to the people I have less chemistry with. This is less smooth and polite, perhaps, but it saves everyone time and with this approach things have a way of working themselves out naturally regarding who I have around me.

However, I do not feel that any culture I have experienced in my travels has had (or will have) in my mind some perfect alternative set of cultural assumptions. Just noticing that other cultures perceive things differently highlights the fact that X and Y reaction that I have mistaken in the past as the natural results of some eternal truth or common sense are only programmed into me by my culture. So in a way I am looking for educational contrasts.

I am also interested in learning from other travellers who have stayed for a long or short time in the country I am visiting (like NGO workers etc.). While there are many travellers who are only visiting for the purpose of partying (I am sure that later on when I tell other people about my long journey it will be my challenge to prove that I am not one of those people), there are also a few out there like me.

I dont anymore care about what other people think about my journey. I now am more interested in getting things done according to the internal voice of my higher nature and dont intend to ask people who are apt to misunderstand me for anything (like "please give me a job" etc.). I imagine that my future engagements, projects, income streams etc will be self or team-created. _____________________________________________________

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