Travel Question about Mountains and Rivers
Question: Do you really want to live
in the mountains and pray?
Answer: Yes
Answer:
Hello Ben,
Thank you for writing. Yes, I was very serious when I wrote that:
Someday I will take all of the holy books that I can find in all of
the languages that I can read and go up on the top of some mountain.
Alone and with no plan of returning.
I believe that your theoretical ideas about trying to make the world a
better place are very admirable, but I cannot follow them whole heartedly. I
know that my position may perhaps be unpopular but my feeling is that
spiritual withdrawal (or just plain withdrawal all together) from society is
oftentimes the best way to make it better. If people were acculturated to
walk away rather than fight, it is my impression that there would logically
be far less conflict.
I it my impression that withdrawing into a contemplative life,
cultivating and sharing knowledge amongst the mountains and rivers is among
the most admirable ways for a person to
make the world better. This may seem selfish, but the purely selfish man will
be the most giving, helpful, and empathetic person on the planet.
I feel that the task of improving the world begins and ends with the
individual. To push outside of the self is to potentially create more
conflict.
These are my feelings as of now.
To answer you other questions:
- Yes, I stayed in Meknes for around three weeks last autumn studying
French with a tutor. I like that town.
- I began traveling in the summer of 1999 and the longest that I have
stayed anywhere continuously since has been the 5 months that I took
refugee in Hangzhou, China to recover from an illness that I picked up
in India.
- Before I began traveling I was a kid who was growing up out on the
farms of upstate New York. I was kicked out of high school half way
through my senior year and sat around the farm for a few months just
reading books. Then I hit the road and traveled around the USA playing
music before I ended up in the south of Florida enrolled in a course of
university study that I promptly failed out of.
- I always wanted to travel. It was not really a question of traveling
or not traveling, I just knew that I would take off once I was done in
high-school. I did not really have much of a plan beyond that.
- My first real job was in 2000 at a sub shop in Connecticut. I lasted
it out for only a single month before going back to Florida and then on
to Ecuador in the summer. This first trip to South America changed my
life and showed me that continuous travel was possible. I also learned
all too deeply that I really do love traveling and all that it entails.
I also learned how to do field archaeology there and found that I could
find easy employment by traveling around the USA from site to site. This
is how I made my money for traveling for 7 years. Now I write words.
Thank you for writing and feel free to ask any other questions. Thank you
also for your offer of a place to sleep!
Walk Slow,
Wade
Useful links:
Question About Travel Money
How to Finance Travels and Study
Abroad
Archaeology Field School
Archaeology Education and
Work
Free Accommodation
while Traveling
How to Start Traveling
(If any of this information helps you - or if you just appreciate me
trying - please tell a friend about
www.vagabondjourney.com. Thanks!)
Question:
Wade
I've spent the last few days looking at your posts about your journeys
and have at once been filled with admiration, questions, and insane
jealousy. I went to Morocco this past summer and have been looking for
ways to get back abroad either to teach English in Morocco or some other
delicious country. Were you ever in Meknes? I was there for 6 weeks,
studying at Moulay Ismail University.
Forgive me if these answers are all on your websites. When did you begin
your journey? What were you doing beforehand and what made you decide to
just up and go? Did you just up and go or did you make some initial
arrangements? I assume that the whole damn thing was quite worth it, but
are there any experiences that stand out above the others? What made you
decide to pack up and leave and how did you pay for it all?
Are you the same Wade who got back to NYC to finish college but hasn't
found a place to stay? I think I read that story on some other website,
if it's you I hope you've found housing. I'm in Ohio, starting my last
year at Ohio State. Otherwise you could crash on my spare air mattress.
Anyway, not to make you uncomfortable or anything, I hope to be able to
jump around the world like you for an extended amount of time and your
blog was something of an inspiration to me. I found this passage in your
post titled Notes from Hungary:
Someday I will take all of the holy books that I can find in all of
the languages that I can read and go up on the top of some mountain.
Alone and with no plan of returning.
I was wondering if you were serious about that and why you wrote it. I
don't know how much credence you give to religion, I know it scares a
lot of people. Jews believe that God wants people to struggle in life,
in many ways, but mainly between physical and spiritual pursuits. Just
as one must not over-indulge in fleeting material things, one must also
not spend too much time engrossed in the spiritual world, worshiping,
praying, or studying God. I guess I believe people were put on this
earth with a mission, to repair the world and make it better for those
who would come later and if we all spent our days in the
church/mosque/synagogue or reading holy books, we would never get
anything done. Anyway that's something I thought about when I read that,
curious about your thoughts.
Seems like you learned a lot on your travels, hope to hear from you at
some point
Ben Becker