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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Rolf Potts
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April 9, 2015 - November 15, 2016
The thing is, most Americans probably wouldn’t find this movie scene odd. For some reason, we see long-term travel to faraway lands as a recurring dream or an exotic temptation, but not something that applies to the here and now. Instead—out of our insane duty to fear, fashion, and monthly payments on things we don’t really need—we quarantine our travels to short, frenzied bursts. In this way, as we throw our wealth at an abstract notion called “lifestyle,” travel becomes just another accessory—a smooth-edged, encapsulated experience that we purchase the same way we buy clothing and furniture.
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. —HENRY DAVID THOREAU, WALDEN
There’s a story that comes from the tradition of the Desert Fathers, an order of Christian monks who lived in the wastelands of Egypt about seventeen hundred years ago. In the tale, a couple of monks named Theodore and Lucius shared the acute desire to go out and see the world. Since they’d made vows of contemplation, however, this was not something they were allowed to do. So, to satiate their wanderlust, Theodore and Lucius learned to “mock their temptations” by relegating their travels to the future. When the summertime came, they said to each other, “We will leave in the winter.” When the
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Wanting to travel reflects a positive attitude. You want to see, to grow in experience, and presumably to become more whole as a human being. Vagabonding takes this a step further: It promotes the chances of sustaining and strengthening this positive attitude. As a vagabond, you begin to face your fears now and then instead of continuously sidestepping them in the name of convenience. You build an attitude that makes life more rewarding, which in turn makes it easier to keep doing it. It’s called positive feedback, and it works. —ED BURYN, VAGABONDING IN EUROPE AND NORTH AFRICA
However you choose to fund your travel freedom, keep in mind that your work is an active part of your travel attitude. Even if your antisabbatical job isn’t your life’s calling, approach your work with a spirit of faith, mindfulness, and thrift.
A lot of us first aspired to far-ranging travel and exotic adventure early in our teens; these ambitions are, in fact, adolescent in nature, which I find an inspiring idea.… Thus, when we allow ourselves to imagine as we once did, we know, with a sudden jarring clarity, that if we don’t go right now, we’re never going to do it. And we’ll be haunted by our unrealized dreams and know that we have sinned against ourselves gravely. —TIM CAHILL, “EXOTIC PLACES MADE ME DO IT”
And so I stand among you as one that offers a small message of hope, that first, there are always people who dare to seek on the margin of society, who are not dependent on social acceptance, not dependent on social routine, and prefer a kind of free-floating existence. —THOMAS MERTON, THE ASIAN JOURNAL OF THOMAS MERTON
Tip Sheet SABBATICALS, UNPAID LEAVE, AND QUITTING YOUR JOB Six Months Off: How to Plan, Negotiate, and Take the Break You Need Without Burning Bridges or Going Broke, by Hope Dlugozima, James Scott, and David Sharp (Henry Holt, 1996) A detailed, action-oriented how- to book about planning and negotiating employee sabbaticals and leaves of absence. Time Off from Work: Using Sabbaticals to Enhance Your Life While Keeping Your Career on Track, by Lisa Angowski Rogak (John Wiley & Sons, 1994) A practical guide to planning and implementing sabbaticals. Includes tips on long-term financial planning.
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Don’t wait around. Don’t get old and make excuses. Save a couple thousand dollars. Sell your car. Get a world atlas. Start looking at every page and tell yourself that you can go there. You can live there. Are there sacrifices to be made? Of course. Is it worth it? Absolutely. The only way you’ll find out is to get on the plane and go. And let me tell you something. That first morning, when you are in your country of choice, away from all of the conventions of atypical, everyday lifestyle, looking around at your totally new surroundings, hearing strange languages, smelling strange, new smells,
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On the Road and Lonesome Traveler. In The Dharma Bums,
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune, Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing. —WALT WHITMAN, “SONG OF THE OPEN ROAD”
Travel can be a kind of monasticism on the move: On the road, we often live more simply, with no more possessions than we can carry, and surrendering ourselves to chance. This is what Camus meant when he said that “what gives value to travel is fear”—disruption, in other words (or emancipation), from circumstance, and all the habits behind which we hide. —PICO IYER, “WHY WE TRAVEL”
On a basic level, there are three general methods to simplifying your life: stopping expansion, reining in your routine, and reducing clutter.
Very many people spend money in ways quite different from those that their natural tastes would enjoin, merely because the respect of their neighbors depends upon their possession of a good car and their ability to give good dinners. As a matter of fact, any man who can obviously afford a car but genuinely prefers travels or a good library will in the end be much more respected than if he behaved exactly like everyone else. —BERTRAND RUSSELL, THE CONQUEST OF HAPPINESS
It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. —RALPH WALDO EMERSON, “SELF-RELIANCE”
When I was very young a big financier once asked me what I would like to do, and I said, “To travel.” “Ah,” he said, “it is very expensive; one must have a lot of money to do that.” He was wrong. For there are two kinds of travelers; the Comfortable Voyager, round whom a cloud of voracious expenses hums all the time, and the man who shifts for himself and enjoys the little discomforts as a change from life’s routine. —RALPH BAGNOLD, LIBYAN SANDS
Considering all material possessions beyond basic necessities to be an obstacle to true living, he espoused the idea that wealth is found not in what you own but in how you spend your time.
A good traveler has no fixed plan, and is not intent on arriving. —LAO-TZU, THE WAY OF LIFE
Most people are on the world, not in it—having no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them—undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate. —JOHN MUIR, THE WILDERNESS WORLD OF JOHN MUIR
On the surface, this seems like a simple enough proposition. “Wherever you go, there you are” says a silly adage—and simply being there shouldn’t be a very tough task. The thing is, few of us ever “are” where we are: Instead of experiencing the reality of a moment or a day, our minds and souls are elsewhere—obsessing on the past or the future, fretting and fantasizing about other situations. At home, this is one way of dealing with day-to-day doldrums; on the road, it’s a sure way to miss out on the very experiences that stand to teach you something.
Often I feel I go to some distant region of the world to be reminded of who I really am.… Stripped of your ordinary surroundings, your friends, your daily routines, your refrigerator full of your food, your closet full of your clothes, you are forced into direct experience. Such direct experience inevitably makes you aware of who it is that is having the experience. That’s not always comfortable, but it is always invigorating.
