Excursion -
the inner journey, or where do I travel inside myself?
A Polish journalist, whose name I once knew but
unfortunately forgot, wrote the following about the travelling man: „With each
border we cross, we approach a piece towards ourselves. “
This consideration, as well as numerous own
experiences and thoughts have induced me to write an excursion about the
journey inside ourselves. Certainly all the things I write only represent own
feelings and perceptions and thus have no general validity. However, probably
it may cause some amusement or inspire one or the other.
I would like to regard the thing from at home for the
beginning. At this place, or at least in its proximity we attend to an
activity, which secures our present and future materially. In whatever kind of
way.
Maslows pyramid of desires explains the background of
this system very well.
As basic needs these things are considered which
secure our surviving and well-being, being issued at short notice. Just as
food, drinking and sleeping. We constantly cover these things in form of a used
routine, consciously or unconsciously.
If these basic needs are ensured, our needs climb up
one or more stages. We build new contacts, improve our training and education
and achieve social developments.
In Central Europe these conditions are settled quite
highly, particularly compared to countries of the third world. In principle the
high prosperity through education and social systems lets the possibilities and
thus also our desires climb upward very far.
Caused by it, often follows the demand to represent
the reached through status symbols. Egomotives move into the foreground and
easily displace some basic needs as love and security.
A modern society aims at success and acknowledgment,
but often has simply no longer the time, between quantifiable successes and
achievements, to experience the following Goethe quotation in its meaning: “Ich
ging im Wald so für mich hin, nichts zu suchen war mein Sinn.”
That is my background and from there on my journeys
started. This as a short introduction.
Many things may rubb off the individual to go on a
journey. No matter whether it is for far away or one gets on the way to reach
any other goal, it is many things, which often cannot be more different at all.
Also, only to focus on some of them would blow up any frame.
A journey is something more simple to explain,
mathematically seen. A body moves between two or several points and spends time
covering the distances, dependent on the component of speed. Mathematicians may
forgive me possible errors and my lack of understanding, but in theory it is
what happens.
It is a fact though, as a traveler one rarely has got
the feeling to be a mathematically calculateable body.
Much more the template of the geometrically assignable
form is lost quickly and the road leads to an unexpected place. Into the inner
soul!
The departure
Often the first step is the most difficult one. Not to
use use too much mathematics again, or this time better physics, to endeavor
and to explain the phenomenon of the first step one can imagine a trainwagon.
If it rolls, then it rolls. To get the wagon rolling is however connected with
force. Force, in order to accelerate the mass over initial resistance. This
same rule naturally applies to New Year’s promisses and Training Plans for the
reduction of the body weight;)
Each journey becomes real by the first step and much
more by the final decision to do it.
A proverb says the following.
Pay attention to your thoughts, they become words.
Pay attention to your words, they become acts
Pay attention to your acts, they become habits
Pay attention to your habits, they become your fate
Once the decision to get on the way is really made,
the stone has started rolling.
The principle is very simple, only the speed, in which
this proverb will sometimes come true can be nearly frightening.
Once , like so often, I rode home on my bicycle from
work late at night.
The motorway with the humming noise of night traffic
was next to me and over my head the monn brightly radiated into the
summernight. The concert of the crickets sounded loud from the shrub bushes and
the air smelled pleasantly from damp grass.
What a great moment that was. Now I sit in the middle
of Africa, south of the Equator and I experience this night in thoughts, as if
it would have been only yesterday.
But back to my nocturnal bicycle ride, where were my
thoughts at that time? How often did I spot myself trying to imagine how it
would be in Africa, or how different the nocturnal noises of the rain forest
probably could be. These thoughts found their way and finally sent me on the
journey. Perhaps only, because I did not displace them.
The Roman poet Ovid once wrote about the art of
traveling, similarly as he wrote about the art of love in his Ars Amatoria.
It pointed out the importance of the moment and
particularly the necessity to abbandon all diverting thoughts and sorrows
before the start of a journey to be able to experience it as it will
happen.
This realization strongly gains significance in our
fast and mobile time.
Away from the familiar places, the friends, the
acquaintances and the family, usually an enormous space opens up before the
traveler. This area is well comparable to new country, which one wants to
discover.
Often I spent whole nights with preparing my travel
route to gather as much information as possible. Good preparation is important,
for sure.
The most important preparation, and I had to
experience that more than only once, is to lose the fear of the uncertainty and
the large unknown before you.
That may sound more simple, than it actually is. Who
goes is gone and alone. Nothing is like it was and no habit and routine has its
familiar validity.
Each new day requires new adjustment respective to the
situation, new self organization and of course improvisation.
Recently I was heading towards Point Noir. Lightnings
twitched over the horizon and an enormous thunderstorm cleared its way over the
Congo. The rain forest swallowed the downcoming tides under its enomous roof
and the piste lay before me like an endlessly winding long and green tunnel.
The dark ruts and pot holes filled with water made my
mind drift away and a feeling of concern and fear began to strike me.
I automatically and reliably moved the motorcycle
around the water holes, but for me they soon became enormous, black seas,
around which I had to negotiate my way.
In the forest it became darker and lightnings came
down like stroboscopes, which let appear some jungle trees as huge monsters.
What was happening with me? I drove through a
thunderstorm and it felt like I arrived at the end of the world and my days at
the same time. Surely, the thunderstorm was rough, but why did it deteriorate
me in such a way?
What happened in the Western Sahara 3 months ago, when
suddenly a feeling of fear struck me on a good tarmac road and would not want
to go away again for a hole day.
Before me was nothing than sand and sun and beside me
the Atlantic gently broke its waves to the coast. Nevertheless I felt in
danger, even if I could not find a real cause for it.
A similar thing happened to me in Venice many years
ago, I was on an evening walk and went by a house. This house was arc-shape
built over the road and one could look into the windows from downside. More
coincidentally than intended my eyes moved over to the white curtains. In the
light of the lantern they appeared old and shabby. Suddenly all my body hair
set up itself and a feeling of horror came up inside me.
I did not walk through the arc then and found another
way back to the hotel.
When I again visited the place in the next morning,
everything was normal. A beautiful house with beautiful curtains, that was
everything I could see.
It took me a very long time, until I could figure out
a reason for these unpleasant perceptions and fears.
There are some characteristic fears and unmachined
things that everyone has got inside.
In familiar situations, as we experience them at home,
these partially subconscious feelings are much too weak to be noticed.
In the enormous and unknown space a journey often
brings along, they can step out every now and then and appear very strongly.
Who arrives at this point, has come to the dialogue
with himself, deep inside the inner soul.
When I accepted these fears for the first time,
without trying to chase them away, they were suddenly gone. Just like that, and
my tendency was going up again.
Ted Simon, a British journalist, who rode his
motorbike around the world in the early 70's, reported of similar feelings in
his book.
Whenever he drove his bike through a rainstorm, he had
the feeling to fight against something inside himself. Similar to Cervantes Don
Quichotte, who saw monsters in the windmills.
These perceptions happen on journeys, and they represent
the journey to ourselves.