Tim Patterson, editor of MatadorTrips.com, recently published an article entitled How To Travel The World For Free (Seriously). There are some good tips in the article, even for the seasoned travel vet.
there are three possible answers for how he can do this and not have to worry about his obligations. 1). He's a jobless loser that contributes nothing to society... 2). He's a rich, privileged, arrogant hipster who, while preaching a lifestyle of no consumerism and organic foods, really travels around in a BMW, listening to his iPod, blogging on his Macbook Air, contributes nothing to society... 3). He's a 14 year old idealist who's parents were hippies, but now work for Haliburton.
That's the sort of cynicism that just depresses me. Why are you so convinced that everyone else is a selfish privileged asshole? At long last, have you no sense of decency sir?
Trusting people you don't know while you sleep in their house is a good way to end up half-naked, raped, dead and in a ditch.
Mom? Is that you?
In fact, the further you get from the cities, the more viciously backwards with respect to medicine, hygiene and hospitality the people get... and, eventually, you reach places where the word 'culture' is completely inapplicable, and your life is seriously in danger.
My personal favorite though is the commenter who cites the words of a Pulp Fiction character as an example of how to live. Wonderful, murderous assassins are who you look up to?
Why Vagabonds Make People Mad
Part of the negative reaction comes from the widely-held belief that travelers are a privileged lot -- privileged because, unlike you and I, they can just drop their lives and leave. People like us, who feel tied down by responsibility, find the suggestion that we actually aren't patronizing and yes, elitist -- how dare you tell me what I can and can't do?
But when I dig a bit deeper into this sort of thinking, I generally find that by elitist, most people really mean enviably rich.
It may be splitting hairs, but I find that, despite rhetoric to the contrary, Americans actually admire elitists. To paraphrase and twist John Stewart a bit, we want advice from elitists. We don't want advice from people that believe everyone's a murderer.
But we also don't want rich people who've never struggled telling us that it isn't hard to drop everything we're struggling with and head out into the world.
The irony of course is that, in this case, the hostile reaction comes in response to an article that has ten tips on traveling cheaply -- in other words, it's trying to show you that you don't need money to travel.
That said, you'll never find me denying that I am very, very lucky and have been handed an incredible amount of privilege in my life, especially relative to the rest of the world.
But 90 percent of America is in the same boat. Troops do not storm our houses, bombs do not fall on our cities, Malaria, Dengue Fever, schistosoma and other killer diseases are unknown here (though that may change).
We are all privileged. For one American to call another privileged is a pot-kettle-black debate.
The privileged part is just a cover for a much deeper and more personal issue in our lives.
So why do we attack the author as an elitist? It's a psychological defense mechanism.
Stop and consider for a moment what Patterson is really saying: it's not hard to drop your life and travel.
Living Well
The debate that happens in the comments of his article cuts right to heart of some very personal ideas -- just how important is your "life"? The unspoken assumption in that statement that ticks people off is the implication that everything you're doing is trivial -- that the life you're leading is so meaningless that it can be abandoned without a second thought.
That's why the attacks on Patterson are so personal and so vehement, because Patterson is, consciously or not, attacking people's most cherished belief, that our lives mean something and are important.
Obviously no one wants to think otherwise.
But I've done it -- dropped everything and left -- and, for me, as much as I am loath to admit it, it was true. Everything I thought I needed to be doing turned out to be totally unnecessary and yes, meaningless.
In fact I spent the first month of my trip wrestling with that. I was caught between feeling like I was finally doing something that did matter and beating myself up about having been suckered into the previous life, now rendered meaningless.
In other words I understand why some people reacted to Patterson's piece the way they did.
The debate that happens in the comments of his article cuts right to heart of some very personal ideas -- just how important is your "life"?
American culture tries to convince us that if you do the right things, you life is very valuable. There are some long standing, deeply-ingrained, fundamental axioms that lead us to believe that relaxation, travel and not working are contemptible. Instead, we're told, you need to work hard to "get ahead."
The notion that the importance of your life is dependent on your ability to "make something of yourself" is pretty well ingrained. Advocating otherwise is going to bring you some hostile reactions (as Patterson recently discovered).
I'm not saying I'm immune. If you learn anything traveling, it's that you can never escape your own culture. That's why I spent most of a week in Goa, India feeling guilty. Guilty that I was enjoying my life rather than working for some future enjoyment. Guilty that I had apparently been wasting my life for some years prior to that moment. Guilty that I was able to finally escape that when so many people never do. Guilty for all sorts of contradictory things.
And scared. Scared that when I got back, jobless and penniless I would end up homeless and starving to death. Scared that I might not make it back (India's bus system will do that to you).
This is the part where I'm supposed to tell you about how I came to peace with it all. But the truth is that never exactly happened. In India I ended up meeting an Englishman who had a seemingly endless supply of excellent scotch and I quickly forgot about my guilt and fear. But it comes back.
I know, that's not the answer you were looking for. Bear with me.
Making Something
What's interesting is how we define the key variable in that sentence -- what does it mean to make something of yourself?
In defending his co-writer, fellow Matador author Josh Kearns offers all sorts of ways that travel can lead to a more meaningful definition of who you are. He cites Alan Watts, Lao Tzu and some other very wise men to point out that in fact traveling can be exactly what you need to "make something of yourself."
But in many ways that simply begs the question -- if you're open to Alan Watts and Lao Tzu, you probably didn't disagree with Patterson's original argument. If you think Alan Watts was a communist and Lao Tzu comes with Kung Pao chicken, Kearns' argument isn't going to say anything to you.
How you answer that question -- what does it mean to "make something of yourself" -- greatly affects how you view the world around you and will determine how you react to a stance like Patterson's.
It's pretty easy to see how the more vitriolic commenters answer the question, all you need to do is reverse engineer the thought process. For instance, it's not hard to imagine that the person quoted above, who says staying with strangers is dangerous, lacks a strong sense of faith in humanity.
I have no idea why, but I'll make a guess -- one way to make something of yourself is to make nothing of everyone else.
If you see everyone around you as a murderous bunch of rapists and psychopaths, you get to see yourself and your family and friends as shining examples of humanity. You've made something of yourself -- You're better than the murderous bastards out there -- without doing anything at all. You're most likely going to lead a miserable existence, but it is one way to answer the question.
For others the answer to the "make something of yourself" question is tied up in western technological superiority. Like the man who says that the further you go "the more viciously backwards with respect to medicine, hygiene and hospitality the people get."
In order to think that you need to believe that your society is superior to everyone else's because we have all the things we value and they have none of the things we value -- never mind what they value, that's irrelevant. So you can say you've made something of yourself because you're part of (by your own definition) a superior society.
But here's what I think Kearns and Patterson are trying to say -- these might not be the best ways to "make something of yourself." In fact you might need to get completely outside yourself in order to make something.
If your definition of living well is making something of yourself and your primary means of making something of yourself is making less of everyone else then it's not surprising that anyone who suggests temporarily abandoning your life and your society is going to make you confused, angry, fearful and perhaps guilty.
The View From Here
No, I never have entirely come to terms with the guilt or the confusion, but the fear and anger did go away. I quickly realized that there was no point being angry with myself for failing to leave my life sooner, I took comfort in the fact that at least I left eventually.
The guilt is still there. Much as I enjoy sitting in hammock in Nicaragua I spend a good bit of my time sitting there thinking about how I should be doing something with my life -- writing a novel, building a website, at the very least writing something about my travels.
You name it, I've felt guilty about not doing it.
But this last trip I started thinking about something else more troubling -- have I turned back into someone who thinks their life is important? Have I forgotten that feeling of total freedom that comes from abandoing your "life," that relief of realizing that all the things I agonize over in my "real" life, are actually quite meaningless?
See unlike the commenters who don't buy the vagabond argument, I suffer from a different American cliche.
For me, America ingrained its devil-may-care adventure motif far more than its make-something-of-yourself cliche. From Lewis and Clark to Jack Kerouac, there's a strong cultural legacy of lighting out for the territories.
Now I'm in an entirely different situation than I was when I left for my last trip.
I'll be married later this month. The common wisdom is that traveling with a family is somehow impossible, in America there's a myth that once you're married and have kids you have to settle down and that butts up against the myth I've been buying into all this time -- Kerouac and the rest.
I still don't know if it's my idea or just me replicating that devil-may-care cultural meme, but I reject the idea of settling down and I've met enough traveling families to know I won't be the first to reject it.
It may be more difficult to travel with a family, I'll have to get back to you on that, and fear not, I will get back to you because I will do it.
But the thing that strikes me is that, if I hadn't already set out, rejected my own life and gone through everything that I went through, adding a family to the equation might well make the whole idea seeming completely unfathomable.
And that's something I think many of these self-styled vagabond travel writers leave out of their "anyone can do it" travel pieces.
Anyone can do it, but it takes a hell of a lot more courage and effort for some than for others. I have no doubt that Patterson and Kearns are both aware of that and I understand that including the nuances just isn't something online journalism generally allows for, but it's a shame because it ends up alienating the people who could most benefit from some encouraging.
So while I agree with both authors, I think the "just do it" incantations are every bit as hollow as a Nike ad -- even when they're true.
And the glibness of most travel writing, particularly those of the so-called vagabond stripe ends up having the opposite effect that the proponents intend (Rolf Potts is a notable exception).
I'm not going to tell you that it's easy to drop your life and take off to see the world. However, I will say that it isn't as hard as you think. Your job isn't as valuable as you think, there's probably someone who'd love to rent your house and your kids will thank you when they're older (mom, dad, thanks).
I'm also not going to say that I don't buy the idea that you should strive to "make something of yourself," but the important thing about the "making" is that you define what that means. For some it might mean sticking to one job and providing for a family. For others it might mean dragging your family around the world on a grand adventure. Both answers are valid -- just make sure that it's you, not your culture, making the decision. And make sure that you realize both really are valid possibilities -- the only limitation to your life is your own imagination.
For me, making something of yourself is a never-ending process and one of the key elements is exploring all the different ways people around the world answer that fundamental question -- what does living well mean?
[VGB image from Rolf Potts, cartoon from the ever hilarious xkcd]