Movement and Escape

“I want us to make this trip a spiritual journey, where each of us seek the unknown, and we learn about it.” ~ Francis Whitman

Human beings are generally discontent. I think that’s one thing the majority of us can agree on. Most of us believe that we can be content or that we will someday be content, but very few of us think we’ve gotten to that place and are living it. Often times we look back and persuade ourselves that we used to be content, that the past gave us feelings that have since gone extinct. But the here and now is rarely enough. Most of us want to be in another time. We want to be in the future when our debts are paid or in the past when we didn’t owe anyone anything.

But in most cases, things weren’t better before and things aren’t going to get any better in the future. What we really want is to believe that this is not all there is. Because if this is all there is, then it’s our responsibility to do what we want with ourselves right now, and I don’t think most of us can handle that type of responsibility.

Instead, we wait for the future or we pine for the past, and we are resigned to the fact that we cannot travel through time. For most of us, that is not enough. Most of us believe that if we cannot travel through time, we can at least travel through space. So we journey, either by bicycle, airplane, or mind-altering substance, and this is the source of the modern human’s obsession with movement.

There are two distinct goals of travel and two distinct personalities associated with each:

1) Escape - The escapist has an inclination to move through space, and/or a compulsion to move through an alternate state of consciousness, but always a movement away from where he or she is. The assumption is that because the individual is not content, the current location cannot offer contentment, and the need arises to move toward something else. Almost always, the escapist never finds the place he or she is looking for, but occasionally finds the eternal search for that place offers a kind of solace.

2) Knowledge - The assumption of the individual seeking comprehension is that he or she needs to have a sense of context and needs to understand what exists out there in order to make sense of what is right here. There are places that specialize in offering this type of insight, places like India and Tibet, Mount Everest and the Arctic, Coney Island, and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Some of these places charge a considerable fee.

I’m not sure which of the two applies to my situation. I want to believe it’s the second, if only because I love New York City so much. I can’t imagine any other place where I’d rather spend this part of my life…but still, I’m itching. I’m itching to move away from where I am mentally and where I spend most of my time physically (in front of a computer screen). It’s even in my dreams now. I see landscapes, I see foreign worlds, and I see animals that don’t exist. I see the places I want to explore, and they are so unlike the place I inhabit. Sometimes I wonder if this culture is so far gone from the place my ancestors adapted to that my instincts are rebelling. I wonder if one of these days my brain is going to refuse to see an artificially illuminated screen of data because it knows that data analysis was not the purpose of my design. And I wonder if one of these days I am going to wake up and start moving quickly in no particular direction except away from here and towards something completely opposite.

Unfortunately, I’m fairly certain that will never happen. Humans (me included) don’t have the guts to do what we really want and what our bodies are made for. Instead I’ll convince myself that contentment will come from an exploration and an eventual appreciation of accessible places. I’ll probably take a trip to India, and when I fall asleep on that spiritual journey, I’ll be dreaming of foreign worlds and non-existent animals.

Unfortunately dreaming doesn’t pay the rent.