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I Would Walk 500 Miles

As I mentioned in my response to Steve Pavlina’s post Deciding What To Do With Your Life, I had been mentally set about nine years ago to spend 10 years walking around the world.

It was 1997 and I’d recently converted to Buddhism from being a Brahmin Hindu. Despite having been a search engine webmaster, I’d never heard of weblogs/ blogs.  What I’d planned to do was document my travels daily by using a laptop and a satellite phone (for the Internet connection) to access a journal website.

I had even considered getting sponsorships for the laptop, satellite phone, and bicycle(s), but not hotels since I wanted to NOT be a tourist most of all. I’d planned to use my wits and any perceived charm to get accomodations. It’s not that I wanted free accomodations, but rather I just didn’t want to do the hotel thing. Other people had done it, why couldn’t I?

My intent was to learn languages, cultures and healing. I had a map of my targeted countries all plotted out, where I’d start and where I’d go, pretty much in sequence. What I didn’t know was where I’d end up or what I’d do afterwards.

This may be the reason why my grand scheme never took place: no ultimate destination for my journey. You can’t get there if you don’t know where you’re going. Because of various perceived obligations that suddenly appeared, I had to move home from Toronto. This move, which in retrospect didn’t actually need to happen, may have changed my life and started my downward spiral.

I realize this now, after reading Steve Pavlina’s Jnana Yoga & Bug-Free Beliefs a few days ago. In it, Steve says:

While you might be willing to settle for living with your current model of reality, begin to notice where that model begins to break down. You will know when it breaks because you’ll experience some form of suffering. But suffering is not there to punish you. It is there to serve as a wake-up call, telling you that you have an inaccurate model of reality and that the way to end your suffering is to correct the errors in your mental model.

Awareness is organic; it takes time to grow. It took me three days since first encounter Steve’s yoga article to realize what my actual mental model was that was so wrong. But now that I know what it is, I can decide how to correct my perceptions. In fact, in Buddhism, and very likely many other religions, it is said that most suffering is due to wrong perceptions.

I don’t at this point whether I’ll still do the walking tour of the world, given that my health isn’t at its best. But I have a very positive feeling that my health will now improve  to the point that I will have the option of travelling should I desire it. And if my knee problems improve, I may just do the cycling part of my tour as well.