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Happy Birthday!
There’s a kid out there who’s hoping to do something that’s infinitely more impressive than simply driving across the U.S. What he’s attempting to do is to get on a plane, travel to some distant continent (I don’t think he even cares which one) and simply go, learning about the world one footstep at a time. And he’s only 18. Correction: today he turns 19. This kid’s one of the most impressive guys that I know. I’ve always looked up to him, even though he wasn’t taller than me until this past year. He thinks on a level that astounds me, observing the world and the people around him with…
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From the Darkness
I fell into a dark period during my first year out of college – one that I can only characterize by the word terror. Dazed and Confuzed I think that many recent grads are a bit traumatized by the sudden jolt that being handed a diploma can induce. But for me, it served as a sudden exposure to the grim truth of life: that there were no more rules, no more curriculums, and that nobody would be there to point me towards the individual path that I was supposed to take. I was terrified by the sudden realization that everything was now up to me. Oddly, they hadn’t offered any…
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The Consequence of Thought
I feel the necessity to be honest about something – to open up about a secondary goal that I’ve had for this trip, and one that I’ve been keeping a secret. I realize now that, if I hope to truly relate to you everything that I’ve discovered along my Journey of Fear, then I simply must come clean. This alternative goal has been to test and determine whether there’s any truth to the two main beliefs that I’ve been experimenting with for the past year of my life. And from what I’ve been finding, the answer is a resounding YES. The Two Beliefs #1: Your thoughts and emotions are entirely…
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The Consequence of Thought – Part Deux
…continued I’ve experienced a profound increase in the amount of happiness in my life, due to my active decision to change the way that I think. But that’s not the reason that I initially chose to do so – that was just a side-effect. No, my reason for changing my thought pattern was because the books that I was reading on bettering my life all pointed to one, recurring concept: that what you choose to think about will, over time, make it’s way into your real-world experience. Put simply into an example, thinking appreciatively about the money that you do have will lead to more money in the bank. Thinking…
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Is it Coincidence
Now that you know about the downward Cycle of Fear that I had to crawl out of whenever I moved back to Pittsburgh, as well as the Way I Believe Our Minds Work, I can explain to you the next stage of my trip. Hoosier Serendipity After spending a few hours hopelessly lost as I drove the state roads surrounding Patoka Lake, I eventually found a state trooper, who gave me directions to a free campsite. The site was absolutely beautiful, and I found a spot that was directly on the lake. Prime real-estate. There was only one other vehicle camped nearby – an RV with an American flag hung…
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Anatomy of a Traveler
“The only difference between a traveler and a homeless man is a destination.” This is but one of many quotes that I took away from my stay at that Hoosier campsite, though most of them I can’t repeat. The family that arrived in the van (we’ll call them the Davidsons, for the sake of anonymity) was a fun, colorful bunch – pretty much my kind of people. For example, that experience would prove to be the first time that I’ve ever heard a three-year-old use the F-word AND the B-word together in the same sentence. But that family truly did teach me a couple of incredibly positive lessons, which I…
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Seeing Beyond the Spoon
While I was packing up to leave on my last morning in Hoosier National Forest, Mrs. Davidson approached me. She handed me a small collection of bright, multi-colored pieces of paper. It was a beautifully handwritten letter. In it, she provided words of encouragement for my journey that have meant more to me than she could possibly have known. But included in this letter was also a list. At one point, I had told everyone that I was trying to see life from different perspectives – particularly from theirs. I wanted to see through the eyes of someone who hadn’t been raised with a silver spoon. In the list that…
