Lost opportunities

"And any man who knows a thing
knows he knows not a damn, damn thing at all
And every time I felt the hurtin'
I felt the givin' gettin' me up off the wall"
K'naan 


Travels are all about choices and sacrifices: a left turn can lead to the most rewarding ascension, meanwhile a detour can bring unwanted incidents. People rarely choose to know and that is precisely why they never learn.

YOLO

At the start of a trip, there is nothing but excitement and anticipation. Finally, we're about to do something we have been dying to do for ages: time to feel and be alive, time to feel free, flee and...free fall. Boogie jumping through spacetime gets people going; dashing through new adventures, fantasies and hopefuls. Still, what are the actual outcomes?

The main concern is not to bank or retain: it is to break, create and recreate. We don't usually know what we want until we need it....badly. And by the time it happens, the space we have left between the want and the need has become wider, fuzzier and blurrier. We can't account for what it means to us anymore simply because it matters no more.

FUD

The whirlpool of our self-imposed experiments can drag us down in a hole deeper than the tiniest singularity. The hide-and-seek game of looking out, living round and losing hope presses us more and more into a tunnel vision. If I don't reach what I set out to grab, am I not lost? Did I not lose my grasp on what it means to win? I could have done something else in the meantime and got better results! And so goes the relentless cycle of fearing the unknown in doubt. 

Opportunities rarely patiently wait to be met: first come, first served; last to reach, first to be ditched. And it's not even that they pick and prick at people: they often have this vague presence that does not register on everyone's radar at the same time. So how do we get a hold of them? A permanent state of perception yields poor performance, and so does constant immersion. Balancing the known with the projected can give a head-start, but resources can be drained over time...in vain.

Solving the great equation of time/investment*positive returns is the great computation at work throughout our lifelong tribulations. Even when we think we have missed out, we gain from the loss and carry the balance forward. Minus plus minus equals a plus, which is why, at the end of our binary lives, the amount of zeroes early laid aside the ones give a much bigger figure than originally experienced.

Discounted entreprises

"Yellow moon. Ima mo, mittsu kazoete, (Yellow moon. Until now, counting to three,)
me wo akete (Open your eyes)
Shadow moon (Shadow moon)
Mada yume wo miteru." (Still now done dreaming.)

Akeboshi


Going on a trip is the occasion to expand our horizon in a deliberate and controlled way. It's a paradoxical adventure in which getting lost is determined by how to trace your way back. So where is the appeal of such risk-free ventures? 

Business as usual

In the grind of our modern life, we have come to realise that we do live extremely secure and regulated routines. There is a time for sleeping, having fun, working, leisuring, studying, experimenting, and even traveling. 

From the CEO of a major corporation to the brown-collar farmer, each individual seems to have a sound idea of what they want to do, when, who with and how. It's all about having a purpose, a goal, an objective that can be broken down in a series of stages. 

And that's how we measure how accomplished we have become: so long as the tally keeps adding and crossing, we rise to new heights of self-satisfaction and pride. The flowchart is clear ahead, the milestones are clean cut, the accounts are all in order. The only thing that is driving everyone forward seems to be the race for the stamp of success and the papier mâché award. 

Tokens of redemption

There comes a time to appreciate the history made: the digits are being squared in spreadsheets but the protocols keep piling up. What of this new product? How about the latest trend? Who can best represent the brand? When is the upcoming valuation? 

This is when the sky scrapers of vanity start to tumble down, while the pile of doubt sky rocket. The charts and the diagrams that use to mean everything suddenly appear vacant. A click of the mouse or a negligent splash of rain can, in an instant, destroy all records of busy-ness.

But who will be blamed, if not the system itself? Everybody carries the trophy, but nobody sheds the tears of downfall. Reality checks in on all, regardless of stature or status. So, when the space ahead looks full of roadblocks, the best is just to make up a new map. Traveling becomes the escape route into our own reflections, it swirls our focus back to the genesis of who we have become. As we dig into our own accounts of memories and lost aspirations, we buy ourselves some time to set the records straights.

 

And this is why we like to go on a holy day: the pilgrimage to the altar of our identity. This is not really an act of devotion and commiseration, it is more of a tribute to what is essential and meaningful. Here, the stakes are low, not because we mindlessly gamble with our time and our space, but simply because we know that there is nothing left to lose.

Integrated developments

"If you know your history
Then you would know where you're coming from"
Bob Marley and The Wailers


As the world and life move forward, it is often too tempting to sit back and linger with fragments of time passed. Revisiting moments that are no more and events that died long ago has the soothing appeal of a comfortable discussion. Yet, what we look for is not an explanation or a commemoration, but a entry point for future deliberations.

The matter of facts

Once upon the time, something happened: at a place, at a time, among people. and for many reasons. We have lived through these situations and have observed, retained, reflected on what they meant for us, for others and many more to come. For a while, it might seem like all is done and clarity has been found: no more dwelling on the past, "time to move on", etc. And this is the only available option in this life: time sets us in motion so that arresting its developments is out of the question.

However, when the clock ticks, it does not tell me whether I'm gone up or down, left or right. Time has no cardinality, and this is why to be lost in time is more enticing than to be thrown out in space. As we get pushed forward by the arrow of time, our collection of experiences grow, and it soon becomes vital to take a break and reorganise the backyard of our existence. The longer we live, the farther we have been, the more pressing this burden is.

Doddles and puzzles

So, it comes off as a surprise that the littlest moment of recollection has very little to do with time. Since imagination is not spacetime-bound, it can travel beyond what was, is or will be. It knows no limit of reason, logic, emotion or organisation. Therefore, diving into our memories relieves us as well as it relives what our mind has in store. For some people, it is all about reassuring themselves that they still have their sanity and traditions intact. For others, it is the chance to explore hidden meanings and patterns that can be used for future predictions.

And this is why looking back is never a definite position, nor a sustainable option. In times of crises, backpedaling serves no other purpose but to help re-establish grounded foundations for incoming tribulations. After running through time and space, we get lost in our internal landscape, we don't hold onto our own clock anymore. That is the perfect moment to give way to our imagination and bring forward the designs of our own creation. Simplifying complexity systematically reveals order in the apparent chaos: life is clearly our lesson in applied alchemy.

 

Misidentifications

"Whatever people say I am, that's what I'm not."
The Arctic Monkeys


Traveling has a way of melting your memory and reinventing your history. As you rush through different spaces and places, you shift from one standpoint to the other with seamless ease and natural adaptation. It soon becomes a question of finding not the perfect path, but the perfect fit for your ideals, ideas and goals.

Kaleidoscopic me

The search of self is only an excuse to roam about the side tracks and unpredictable ways of life. One day it's a straight line, another day it's a hyperbolic curve, or a spiral a week later. These unintended shapes and pathways integrated in the miscalculated outlooks we bear break down the core of who we originally were. Life becomes a fractal: a pattern that explodes into multiple directions and that loses its meaning under several and repeated readings and starting points.

But interestingly, there is convergence of actions and movements towards the same original centre. The same way petals always sprout from the bulb of a sunflower, everything that we do, no matter how disoriented, roots back into the seed that stays within us. It's only that the people we meet at certain times and certain spaces keep an image of us that immediately becomes outdated the moment we leave and move on. 

Memory in sharding

This is precisely why keeping in touch is such an important stepping stone for our identity. It's all about checking that the scattered pieces still fit into our mental puzzle without breaking down our perceived unity. Is the experience that I had with person Z in line with what I'm doing in place Y? Will the things that I learn in place B help me link back to what I used to do with person A? The interrogations never cease and keep producing more sub-categorisations, taking more of our internal energy as we go.

Yet, none of this is apparent to the external eye. As long as people recognise your personality and behaviours, you are still who you are in their minds. They will keep telling that story of how you disappeared into an unknown country when you were 21, the same way they see you look into the future and make further plans to walkabout. What they don't see is that the younger you and the current you are far more disconnected than the narrative that they tell. The early experimentation has turned into deliberate exploration. 


It's only much later, down the fractured trenches, as the fields mount into the dead bodies of your rotten history, that you will be able to see the grand design. The patterns that you traced, the shapes that were left under every shortcut you made. These are your signature: the information you traded while undergoing identification checks.

Reductionist calculations

"Your prince's crown 
Cracks and falls down 
Your castle hollow and cold 
You've wandered so far 
From the person you are [...]" 
Keane.


Traveling just doesn't happen in physical space, whether past, present or future. It takes place, first and foremost, in our mind. It can be boiled down to how we configure our desires, pilot our plans and even execute our dreams. We have to crunch numbers beyond kilometers, days, currencies and probabilities to produce a valid output.

Missed representations

Sure, there might be people who can pick up a bag at the drop of their hats and stream their lives away from any predicated guess. These are the wanderers, the adventurers, the criminals, the anti-socials who serve as counter examples to the orderly ways of the society. Do they meet a happy ending or a tragic fate in the end? It would be hard to account for, because they set themselves up with unknown parameters from the start.

 
The appeal of travel is already very mysterious in itself: it's like evolution is giving continuous prompts for you to get up to speed, on your feet, into the wilderness. The challenge is always terrifying and the variables impress with their randomness. Certainly, it would pay to prepare and to validate different algorithms for potential threats. What to do if it rains? Where to sleep if no money? How to call if no network? When to leave if romantically entangled? 

Endlessly scalable

So, the human brain can compute anything and everything, real or imagined, relaxing or threatening. You can decide which path to walk at any crossroad, but you can only do so when you have envisioned what is likely to happen in a set environment. In the comfort of our familiar surroundings, this process has compiled conditioned reactions that are so predictable that they lack refinement. I know how to navigate my town to reach my home, even if the world is to end.

This is why, to sharpen our downtrodden instincts, we need to update our database in a new setting. It is testing and trialing: sometimes with major errors, often with common bugs. But the reward comes from the experience itself: going up, and down, sideways, straight or backwards; there is perpetual movement. Traveling is a deliberate surveying and mapping of the pathways towards the origin of our consciousness.

Recurrent probabilisms

"Might last a day, yeah
Mine is forever"
Courtney Love.


We often think we are living unique moments and experiencing special events when we are at the peak of positive emotional reactions. It might be something we waited for so long to happen, or a situation we had been planning for years, months, days that suddenly comes to life. We are exhilaratingly taken by the instant, as we realise how much of our past selves we had dedicated to this present moment.

Where was my mind?

So where does the heightened sense of accomplishment comes from? Is it because of the time that was spent in waiting? Could it be because we did not quite believe things would unfold for our own benefit? Or was it that there were so many hidden variables to compute into this single output? Regardless, there is always the feeling of potential risk or loss in the gambling wheel of life. What we predict is often what we hope for, rather than what we really picture in our mind.

And it is true that in our head, there is a constant chaotic whirlpool of emotions, thoughts, feelings, beliefs, ideas, memories, plans and perceptions. At one end, we can choose to relentlessly isolate some of its elements, but on the other end, we could go by total abandonment, allowing ourselves to get sucked into the traumatic drama. This is what we do when we are in the blues, waiting for the internal tempest to uncover a new way to make sense of the world. Depression indicates the limits of our mind in dealing with its own confusion.

Probably a maybe

So what gets us back on track? Nothing more but a game of probabilities: the lure of navigating the chessboard and turning ourselves from pawns to knights to queens. It is nothing more but mathematics applied to real-time digits and figures, though we all want to bet on the road that is the shortest to the King's castle. In this mental race, we wrongly believe we alone can see the way forward for ourselves. We ignore training and pattern recognition. We forget our mind is just a machine eager to learn...to death. 

As a result, we have to dabble about in probabilisms most of the time: maybe we are going for the best, maybe we are staying for the better, the results can only be known after we have gone through all of this. And this is precisely what makes us feel stuck: changes are embedded in our lives and so are our attempts to override them. Who can say they have always had triumphs, without ever experiencing defeats? Only those who run away from themselves can afford such consequential lies and deceptions...

Singularities

"You are my sweetest downfall
I loved you first, I loved you first..." 
Regina Spektor


Why are some moments more memorable than others? What makes someone special? When is it that wandering in space becomes aloofness? Who decides that I am, indeed, a unique individual? There is something mind-boggling about facing these interrogations inside out and wrestling with whatever conclusions are derived from them. When you are used to walking steadily along a familiar road, it can come as a revelation to explore what makes you yourself.

Chaos in osmosis

So, we have our instances of being tempted by the rabbit hole, often for the sake of seeing something new or uncovering well-hidden secrets...and possible treasures. We look for opportunities to slip away from reality and jump into the fantastic. It can be a house that we believe is inhabited by a ghost, or a twist in our chest that tells us that the person in front of us is "the one". At times, we are convinced to have received a mission from above to do what we do. We go through the experience and end up self-aggrandised and relieved, somehow, that our identity is once again preserved from the rub of others.

But we can't prove any of this. There is no formula to extract from our reflections, no theorem to conceptualise our findings. We can check with peers whether what we are saying makes sense and review it all in therapy, yet it remains immaterial. How can it be real, when it can't be seen, touched, smelt, heard nor tasted? Even worst, how can I be sure that what happened only ever happened to me and me only? There definitely is no guarantee in the uniqueness of my escape: there might be countless of others who have swirled into the same black hole and shut themselves from the scrutiny of the outside world meanwhile.

Quizzing the unique

The fact is, experimenting with ourselves might initially appear like the most singular thing to do, because it's the raging impulse to KNOW that pushes us past the horizon's line. The path is infinitely uncertain and we are on a quest to make sense of the probabilities ahead: it's a question of cataloguing the world around us and building up our own internal framework. As we walkabout, we trace our past, dot our present and sketch our future in quick strokes, since time is always running away when space closes upon us. 

In the end, each pathway becomes uniquely integrated in knitting our world line. The thread was stamped by us and for us, and no one else. This unique footprint is the essence of our existence, simply because although we might have crossed and followed others along the way, we always succumb to our own wanderlust. This is also what helps us shape a universe of our own aside other multiverses. We are all on our own planets, insulated from time to time, colliding at other hours. And the memories and experiences we have are merely what remains after our precious biosphere has been thoroughly annihilated.

Cosmic haze

"The negativity is ruining your sleep
It makes you wanna cry on your pillow."
The Futureheads.

Dilluted away

Space-shifting takes a lot of guts and forward thinking. Visualising new surroundings, preempting lurking dangers, calibrating possibles actions, testing various paths, etc. It is all part of the excitement. But with a lot of zooming in and out comes a very diffuse dizziness. What was I pursuing again? Where did I start from? When am I going to land? Which way am I facing as now? How do I make the jump to the next stage? Confusion is always round the corner.


And it does make sense that puzzlement should occur. The more we switch space, the less conscious we become of time passed. Both dimensions are tightly linked, but not in the way we often think. Racing against the clock might give us the impression that we have accomplished a lot in a short interval, when in reality we haven't really moved out of our shells. Similarly, as we roam about the world, we get the sense that we have transformed into a new being, yet we would have a hard time remembering what we were like before. When we stretch in one direction, we pull in in the other. Less memory when space-shifting, less change when time-traveling.

Stay put

Then, what about immobilism? Standing still, witnessing evolution in people and relationships, tracking updates in places and traditions, becoming an observer to other people's live, shouldn't it provide a stronger sense of self and integration as opposed to the graceful degradation surrounding us? Isn't looking out another way of peering in? After all, what we perceive and do in the outside world often is the result of what we think and feel in the depth of our minds.


But that would be forgetting one essential component of our lives: confusion. When there are no set truths and no universally established systems, nothing comes more naturally than doubt. There is no guarantee that what I see really is what is. There is no certainty that what I think is purely objective. There still is randomness, ambiguity, duality, exclusion, interpretation in and outside me. So I can never say for sure that my observations and conclusions are right/correct/accurate. I cannot vouch for sure that my thoughts are truly and exclusively mine. There always is doubt.

Blacking out

So, instead of applying force, triggering friction, asserting pressure, welcoming doubt might be a more productive operation. If I can't stand without sinking, it might be preferable to lay down and float. Sure, the currents and the streams will inevitably spin me around and make me lose my internal compass after a while, but with low resistance also come the benefits of a weakened impact. Just like a sponge seek to soak and absorb all the water in the oceans, I am willing to let life pass through me at all time and all space.

Historionics

"Music is the safest form of time travel..." Fully Filmi.

 

History is what is left when everything has been lived, done and sits dusting. There are always stories to be told and written, but the number of pages will vary. And so will the time frame. When we tell stories, we relive them, but we also recreate and revive them, for a brief moment. But they are not real, they merely exist to entertain ourselves and tickle our memories. 

Know where you're coming from

When some particular stories get adopted by a community or a nation, they all converge to a cultural pantheon. People who fought for the land, who thought for progress, who planned for systems, who created for pleasure, and did so on a grand scale, they almost always become "heroes and heroines" for the locals. They are remembered, worshiped, praised and venerated for their genius and their contributions. At least, that is what books and bank holidays want us to believe.

There is something coercive about having to pay respect to a time forsaken well before our existence. When we commemorate, do we actually remember or do we blindly pretend to? Isn't it nothing else but vacuous customs designed to arrest time for a little while? We certainly would remember none of these "special" events if they didn't figure in our annual calendar. 

So, remembrance doesn't have to be an institutionalised procedure. Most of the time, it is an individual experience of time travel that happens at any moment and any time, but is always triggered by a familiarly unfamiliar object. It can be that dining set you received at Christmas, the silver handcuffs you got for your birthday, the photograph of your first car, someone's face or name, etc. When our memories have been confined for so long in our mind that they are almost gone to oblivion, there comes the time to rewind.

Erase and remind

Of all the possible anchors for the rocking boat of our memories, music is the soundest. It carries forward sensations, emotions, recollections and reflections that have been preserved in our subconscious. Music mixes the most intimate moments we have lived and burns them on the inner layers of our mind so that they can be replayed at a later time. No words are needed, no ambiguity will interfere when nostalgia strikes through a few notes, a song or a prerecorded instrumental. 

This is why we need artists, musicians, performers and other rocknrollas. The intensity of their art often tramples their own stories and individualities. Their talent is the real force that pushes the boundaries of life experiences and breaks down the confines of mortality. What we read in books are elaborate scripts written by erudites to impress our minds. What we really want is the power to explore our impressions without restriction. 
 Indeed, music gives us the freedom to relive and release our personal stories to the point where a singularity of events becomes the plurality of shared memories.

Node-fications...

"Yesterday is just a thought away." Shingai Shoniwa (The Noisettes).
 
When do we get the green light signal? What makes a thought suddenly spring into life? How come our ventures always seem to be born unexpectedly, if not prematurely? There seems to be an urge for action at the genesis of every step we take towards our goals. We have contemplated, thought, fancied, anticipated and dreamt a certain event, and also repeatedly brushed it off as silly, disruptive, fantaisist, inconvenient and disturbing. But isn't that precisely what novelty is about?

Most of our time is spent enjoying things that are already established around us: our work, our family, our circle of acquantainces or friends, our neighbourhood, our language, our laws, our nation, and even our way of thinking. But there always comes a time when we feel the itch: we want something strange to happen, we want some sense of adventure to destroy our routines... temporarily. Yet we shy away from the thought, trying hard to muffle it, for months, for years, for decades.

5D reality

Then, something gets triggered in our head. Our brain, our intuition, our subconscious one day present us with a now or never situation. A choice must be made: to go the well-trodden road (once again) or to engage in the new path (for once!). And this is not so much of a risk than an exploration, because the aim is not to experience a quick thrill: it is about checking whether what we anticipated all this time can ever match reality.

In a way, we are forever children, yearning to understand the essence of this world: its physics and its metaphysical, its biology and its mechanics, its organics and its artificiality. We don't want all the stories to be only told, we want to become a character of these reality tales. So, what better way to do this than becoming the mastermind of our own universe?

Masterminds

In spite of what is commonly believed, we can become the architects of our own environments. It does not mean setting our tent in a desert island or revoking all forms of governance. It is the much simpler process of getting hold of what make us an island, a unique landscape, an original design, a natural chef-d'oeuvre. "Gnóthi seautón": "know thyself" as the Ancient Greeks advocated is the only way to reach that ultimate level of self-actualisation theorised by our Modern Maslow.

Being receptive to our own mental and intellectual states seem to be an overstated cliché, as per coaching and psychological practices. Yet, it is so often underrated in our routines and everyday life, because at all times we want to be "aware" of everything that happens at the time it happens. Our human brain is inherently limited by its inability to reach omniscience, so we must rely on accurate memorisation, observation, analysis, reflection and conclusion. This means that we must strictly, as best as we can, retain information as raw as possible, without the confusion of emotions, the bias of opinions and the perspective of past or future ambitions. Only then can our intuition birth ideas and concepts with a consistency and an integrity that will be effortlessly carried out in our lives.

Entropy: there, then, here, now

"The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind." Bob Dylan.

You would think that the more you move around, travel, discover, uncover, recover, the more experience you would have. Yet, it seems to work the other way round: the more you explore, the further you want to go, the more restless you become. It's like these travelers who have been to far reaching countries and are suddenly thrown back home. Except that the home is no longer there: the memories they had of it have been tainted and dispersed, blown in the wind. So, there is nothing left for them to yearn for in the past: they must look into the future.

Mind blowing

Movement and exploration are two simple manifestations of a single phenomenon: curiosity. Curiosity is what drives every person on this planet to step away from the comforting and familiar, to try, to fail, to walk into the heart of chaos in an attempt to find out what makes life what it is. If anything, it is like triggering a chemical reaction among the components of one's existence so as to isolate its core elements, its elementary particles. Outer travel is just another way to bring about the chemistry of the world to us.

But since nothing is gained and nothing is lost in such entreprise, what is the point of it? After all, we commonly yearn to obtain knowledge, skills, understanding, wisdom. We get an education, we get training, we get jobs, we get material possessions, we collect acquaintances, friends, partners, children, but none of this ever seems to be of any value in the end. We seem to have gained nothing but wasted our time and lost our way.

Fizzled out

This is because settling was never the real purpose in the first place. The point of a chemical reaction, just like alchemy, is to bring about a transformation: from ordinary to extraordinary, from dull to shiny, from stone to gold. Exploration is about transforming the mind, movement is about transforming the body. The places where you've been, the sights that you've seen, the people you have met serve no purpose but to reinvent yourself in this world. What we are along the timeline of our existence is nothing but a series of coincidental and self-engineered transformations.

What about those who have never travelled? Those who have lived in the same environments, in their societies, communities, families? What about those who shut themselves from the influences of the outer world and resist the perceived chaos of the universe? They would be disappointed to know that theirs is a very familiar pattern of the worldly chemistry. In fact, they are essential markers against which we measure the degree of change in us. Those friends who have remained when you left, upon seeing them, you cannot help but realise how much you have changed while you were away.

 
It makes sense to accept that the order of our lives is nothing but streamlined chaos transformed by our own storytelling. There is no direction, no destiny, no fate, no determinism nor fatality: everything is chemistry. Yet it doesn't mean that we should stop believing in a mythology, a dreaming, a free-will or a spirit. In fact, the ultimate transformation that we can bring upon ourselves is to transcend our mind and body so as to unleash our imagination. Without imagination, there is no curiosity, without curiosity, there is no life. Curiosity is the essence of Humanity.

Good times...

"If I ever feel better, remind me to spend some good time with you..." Thomas Mars

Pranging out

It is fairly obvious that the main purpose of life is to "have a good time", to distract ourselves until the moment of our death. It is as simple a concept as can get, however, ironically, it is one of the most difficult theory to put into practice. Why is it that, even in the middle of a celebration, the moment we find tremendous enjoyment is, simultaneously, the moment we experience the greatest sadness? What is it that spoils the fun? Why is the killjoy forever louder than the cheerleaders?

Our lives are full of distractions: from TV to the internet, from family to friends, from work to leisure, from excursions to travels. The more we move in space, the slower time goes and, consequently, the less conscious we become of our own existence. Such is the magic of relativity. And even though we would like to believe that we are saddened by the passage of time, in fact, we are happy to have been able to fill our lives with as many memorable moments as possible. 

In wonderland 

The first times are among the most colourful dots on the timeline of our lives. The first time you crawled, the first time you talked, the first time you walked, the first time you went to school, etc. And even when we have no memory of these events, we are happy to rely on others, close ones, to remember these for us, times and times again. That is what parents are for... until we become parents ourselves and start collecting memories for our offspring. We hang onto these to define our identity, who we are and who we want to become.

More often that not, memories are, in fact, an unsurmountable burden. We remember good times when they are gone, we hold on to memorabilia to avoid facing the daunting future, we dream of changing the past to experience something else. Some people are on a mission to keep the status quo when everything else pushes for evolution, most want to bring back the golden ages without regards for the buzzing present, others run away from what was before in an attempt to seize the future before everyone else. 

In this battle of perspectives on time, it is a real challenge to have a good time. The pressure is on everyone to have the "best" moment of all their lives. And we play the game by upping our expectations of our own lives... to our own loss. First we want good grades, then we want shiny goods, later on we crave for stylish partners, we despair to get perfect children, before reverting to striving for good deeds. Topsy turvy twisted dreams that we discard as soon as they come to life, or don't.

Disorientation

So, in the end, none of this really matters. The good times, the bad times, the old and the sad, they are often as forgotten as we go on living. In reality, we would like to stop time and exist in a sort of permanent oblivious state to what surround us. When we distract ourselves, we don't do so exclusively to forget that we have to build a living, we mostly aim to reach social unconsciousness.
Forgetting that we have an identity, forgetting that we have families, forgetting that we have duties, forgetting that we are as common as humans can be. 

Good times are all about embracing the vacuity and vanity that defines our time on Earth...for better or worse.

Gone...missing?

"Just because I'm losing... doesn't mean I'm lost... doesn't mean I'll stop [...]" Chris Martin (Coldplay).

Traveling is very much akin to losing. Losing your inhibitions, your expectations, your apprehensions. Without a doubt, those who have a taste for shifting spaces and shifting places must have lost something in themselves that they are trying to recover through traveling. 

On the road

It is very easy to lose yourself in anticipation of what elsewhere will be like. It's not about the grass being "greener", more so the grass being different, alluring and promising. There is always a sense of adventure in going for what has never been experienced before. In this globalised world, we see, hear, smell new places day-in day-out, whether or not we want to. Most of us enjoy the comfort of knowing that the new exists while appreciating that the new will never be part of our routine. That is what "different" means in reality: something foreign, useful to compare our own lives to, helping us grow and break the mould of our collective experience.

But different also means something else. It is what fascinates and scares. It is what reminds us that despite being humans, we can never be the same. It is what, any time and any place, causes us to stop and step back and become observers of our lives. What succession of events dots my lifeline? What is my trajectory on the geodesics of this world? How relative is my world in the light of multiple frames of reference? Are we coexisting or do we belong to individual spacetime continui? 

Spaced out

There is much turmoil in realising that our existences are not uniform and that there is no truth in this world. What some decide to yearn for means nothing to others. What certain people believe with all their might is derided by other people. What drives me to move forward is what pushes others to fall back. So when each of these worlds intersect, a re-evalution becomes necessary to avoid misunderstandings, collisions and hurts. It is necessary to become the observer of the other person's timeline, not just as a way to attest his/her existence, but also to learn from it.

Often, we wait onto inspiration from role-models, famous figures and other examples established in our communities. But this is not satisfying, because who is closest to us quickly becomes invisible to our eyes, heart and mind. In fact, what inspires us is what creates magic in front of us: the mystical, the puzzling. What else could it be, if not what is strange, unusual and...different? Inspiration is therefore nothing but that moment we realise that our lives can shift to another timeline, that there are multiples possibilities ahead of us and that we have the option of veering in any direction.

Losing yourself

Sure, this has the effect of making us dizzy, anxious, prostrated after a while, but inspiration often assaults us for a brief moment. The process of traveling is always the same: deciding, organising, moving, discovering, adapting. Herein lies the challenge. This is why, although most of us can be inspired to go, only a set of happy fews head away. And those who have remained start to question their traveling mates. Where are you now? What time is it there? When are you coming back? What people who remain never realise is that those who are gone are never missing. They have shifted their individual lives to the universal scale. They are busy writing their stories for others to read...