It's Not Always Easy

Let me tell you the truth about being a perennial nomad: it's not always easy. In fact, sometimes it's damned difficult. Sometimes you have to take the challenging road, "the one less traveled," as Robert Frost puts it, but for you it's the only road. You feel certainty about your decision, although you can't explain it even to yourself, let alone to others. When you are confronted by it you might long for the pleasures of the sedate and commonplace - but these enticements are not enough to prevent you from proceeding. You know that some eventual payoff will make the hard road the better road, but you might not be able to see it when you make your decision. It is enough to realize that it is there, tantalizing yet ethereal and elusive. It's a matter of vision. And it's not that if you take to the road you lack responsibilities; it's that your responsibilities are different.

I understand that my explanation of this phenomenon lacks specificity, but that's often how it is when we are dealing with larger, more substantial issues of the spirit. The wisdom of Walt Whitman in "The Song of the Open Road" bears repeating in this context:

Listen! I will be honest with you,

I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes,

These are the days that must happen to you:

You shall not heap up what is call'd riches,

You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve,

You but arrive at the city to which you were destin'd, you hardly settle yourself to satisfaction before you are call'd by an irresistible call to depart...

Once you have answered the call of the open road, you might occasionally come across those you left behind - and they might have accumulated wealth, relative ease, and a modicum of social acceptance by those who have taken the same path that they have. But if you have made true decisions in the course of your journey you will not envy them. To the contrary: they have not seen what you have seen and done what you have done; they have not taken the more difficult road, not only once but over and over again, responding to an inner prompting that cannot be denied.

Here are some of the actions I have taken when responding to the clear summons of my inner voice:

I abandoned all my possessions except what would fit into a duffle bag and set forth hitchhiking: I knew not where I was going or for how long.

After traveling around Europe for the summer, instead of flying back to the States I decided to take the Overland Trail, also known as the Hippie Trail, across the Middle East to the Indian Subcontinent.

In India, when I barely had enough money left to take public transportation back to Europe, I instead decided to go to the mystic land of Nepal.

In Nepal, when the Himalayas beckoned, I threw my duffle bag over my shoulder and followed an unmarked footpath, without map or guide, high into the mountains.

Finally back home in Seattle, instead of settling down to a steady job I got an irresistible urge to return to India, and I hitchhiked east over the Cascade Mountains in the midst of a harsh, punishing winter. It took me months, but I didn't stop until I reached my destination.

I could go on and on, because the journey has been unending and there have been many forks and crossroads along the way where I had to choose to take this direction or that. But here is the crux of the matter: never base your decisions on what you think other people want you to do. Listen to your inner voice. Wait, if you have to, until you can clearly hear it. And then follow that path, the right path, even if the way is rocky and you become footsore long before the end of it. As Rudyard Kipling says it in "If," there will be times when you have to "force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they are gone." However, there will also be times when it all comes together, when it all seems worthwhile, when you come to a place of (temporary) respite, when you meet a soul-mate, when you experience a profound insight into the heart of the universe, or when you are simply following a path, footloose and fancy free. Whitman puts it like this:

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,

Healthy, free, the world before me,

The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

Despite these words, though, Whitman did not always lead an idyllic life. When confronted with the horrors of the Civil War, he volunteered to serve as a nurse in army hospitals. And almost none of his poetry was published in anthologies during his lifetime. He self-published his masterpiece Leaves of Grass, adding to it over the years and putting out one edition after another. And yet now, despite the vicissitudes of his life, he is considered one of the great poets in American literature.

In closing, always choose the right path, whether it is smooth or rough. Only a heartfelt, sincere decision will get you where you need to go.