The Joys of a Suffering Traveler
After five years of university, I wanted to take my life in a different direction. I went to university straight out of high school. I was seventeen, a kid and I had no real idea where my life was taking me. I knew at the time that if I got accepted into a prestigious University I would be one of those kids who everyone else knew had a future. I went, persevered through all the late nights, did all the work necessary and graduated. Unfortunately, I still had no real purpose in my life, no real meaning and no real path to what I was going to do. Life was happening to me. I felt an empty hole of unfulfillment that pleaded to be filled.
I made some money the summer that followed my graduation and I did what any lost 22-year-old university graduate would do with a few thousand bucks in his bank account, I booked a one-way ticket to Thailand. A classic millennial move and the first stop to the rest of my life.
Landing in Bangkok for me can be described the same way drug addicts talk about their first time shooting up heroin; An enchanting joy of serenity and purpose. I remember stepping out of the airport and experiencing this unknown culture for the first time. I knew then this was finally a place where the chaos of life made sense. It introduced me to the hope of an undiscovered paradise and this hope gave my life the much-needed certainty of purpose. I was fascinated by the alluring smells and the obscure sprawling metropolis that stood before me. I was hooked. My drug of choice; Travel. I spent the next three and a half months experiencing the backpacker’s utopia of South East Asia, meeting fascinating individuals from all over the world.
I fell in love with the brilliant minds I came across. I dove head first into their philosophies and ideologies reinforced by preposterous stories most people only watch in movies or read in books. These backpackers carried with them a rare perspective on living that personified best a romantic dream of life and happiness, I was sold.
I wanted to travel forever, I felt like for the first time in my life I found the freedom I was longing for in life and the happiness I couldn't find before. I felt as if though I’ve discovered a way to beat the only real constant of life, suffering. I had beat the matrix, the rat race of life, and by traveling I was going to be forever happy. I had little to no worries and the responsibility of my existence fell back into ‘the unconscious paradise best seen in childhood. Where finitude and morality are only dimly comprehended.’¹
So I traveled, I was on the pursuit of happiness for two years. Always finding new ways to prolong my adventure. But after years on the road, I found that the empty hole of unfulfillment I felt before I took off to Bangkok remained. I felt a real paradox of misery inflicted by the pursuit of happiness. A drug addict is happy until you take his drugs away. In light of my emptiness, I discovered that true freedom isn’t having the ability to choose your pleasures but the ability to choose your pains. Traveling through life without a grandiose purpose for myself never eliminated the ever constant of life; suffering yet it merely postponed it.
I found that a tree can’t and won’t grow to reach the heavens without its roots touching the depths of hell. That our life is defined by the values we choose to suffer for and that the only constant within our wretched existence is suffering. I learned that true meaning is found with a grandiose purpose worth all the suffering and that life is not about avoiding pain or the pursuit of happiness because ultimately this pursuit becomes a contradiction in itself. Life will bring us joy in the values we choose to suffer for and the freedom to pick our own pains is our greatest advantage. Our capability of willingly taking a proactive role in producing a meaningful reality is the true joy to life. The challenge that, if unanswered, will lead us into the dark winding path of unfulfilled suffering.
The happiness I first experienced while traveling didn’t come from the traveling itself but in my choosing this path of suffering for myself. Though it gave no grand meaning or purpose it was still a choice I made to prioritize backpacking before anything else. Where I thought I was determining my pleasure I was really choosing my pain and what I was going to suffer for. This is where my first real spec of purpose came from.
The joys of life are as simple as how we decide to perceive the world and the meaningful pursuits we aspire for. Traveling solidifies new paradigms within ourselves that help us believe in the possibility of great things. Travelling brings temporary happiness but if you do it for long enough you realize that it isn’t the traveling itself that is making you happy but the change in your inner belief systems. Or as the pseudo-intellectuals like to say “Finding thyself.” Traveling long enough without purpose will inevitably lead you to discover that the magic wasn’t an external escape to the sufferings of life but in adopting control of the experience of choosing one’s suffering.
Citations
- Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules For Life: An Antidote to Chaos, (Random House Canada, 2018)
