The Surrender Project: Day 26: Pondering On a Mountain
Another day in the life of just hanging out and enjoying the simple joys of travel. Today started a bit later because my sleep schedule has been out of wack recently, not letting me fall asleep until past 3:00 am. Woke up around 10:00 and Vincent and I ventured out to find some breakfast. Another day that is not kicked off with a meditation, something that I want to get back into but I am realizing how hard it can be when somebody else is also on your schedule now. We find a nice little rooftop spot overlooking the lake in the middle of Pushkar, ordering more curries with more chapati. I am starting to get a little bit tired of the amount of bread I am eating here. It also doesn’t help that Pushkar is a strictly vegetarian town because of the temples in the city so I feel like I am struggling a bit to get the substance and protein that I am used to eating. Anyway, breakfast is enjoyable and Vincent and I just talk about all the random things we do. It is enjoyable to have a friend traveling, especially one who you seem to understand on a bit of a deeper level. There is an openness to share and be incredibly open about thoughts, feelings, past events, desires, and anything else that we as a society typically hesitate to share with somebody we have known for only a handful of days. I also have noticed that writing is more challenging when I am spending days with somebody else, not only to find the time to slow down and commit a few hours to typing out my thoughts, but that I tend to not reflect or have as deep of thoughts as I do when I am alone. This makes sense, of course, as I am typically lost in conversation about our views or the people who have impacted our lives, not sitting and gazing off into the distance hyperaware of every thought, feeling, and emotion that goes through my mind. Maybe this is a good thing, forcing more time in the present as conversation tends to do. I do not think it is good or bad actually, just different, as I have been enjoying this era of self-reflection and the growth that is a byproduct of such a focus. It brings the idea of our time is not actually ours, an idea Burkeman brought up in Four Thousand Weeks. Well, it wasn’t exactly that our time is not ours, but that we are in control of so little of it. From working to taking care of things that arise, to waiting in traffic, to all the things that steal moments from us. This is an idea I will explore more tomorrow, but just wanted to mention it. It is probably something that is healthy for me to get used to, not being in complete control of my time, because the reverse culture shock when I return home and find myself having to do things that I maybe do not necessarily want to do at that moment but have to is going to be extra hard if not. Anyway, after breakfast we walked the narrow streets of Pushkar and found ourselves back at the hostel. I knew I needed to start writing and Vincent had to do some research for his continued travels. It is funny how completely opposite we are traveling; Vincent does extensive research of each place he is visiting, ensuring he gets everything that he could out of each location he maps out. While I, as you all know, do not even know what I am doing tomorrow, let alone in a week or month from now. I end up getting on a phone call with the guy (we will call him G) Trey and I traveled with for almost a month in northern Thailand and Laos. We haven’t talked in months and it was crazy to hear where he was and how everything had happened over the last few months for him. It sounded like he lived a lifetimes worth of experiences in a few months and none of it was planned for when we said our goodbyes a few months back. The reason I mention this is because G and I have had a few conversations around this idea of letting go and taking on the opportunities life hands you when it does, and not worrying too much about planning each step along the way. It was a nice to catch up, and nice to hear how things keep working out for somebody who has had that belief a lot longer than I have.
After the forty minute phone call I finally settle down and get most of my blog written. For writing breaks I talk to Vincent, get some push-ups in, and order some food from the hostel cafe on the third floor. Around 5:00 we head out, seeking to climb to a temple that is located on top of one of the little mountains for sunset. We get to the top about 45 minutes later, sitting on some rocks overlooking the surrounding area of Rajasthan. The air quality isn’t great so there is a consistent little haze over the land but the visibility is still clear enough to watch life happening far below. My mind instantly starts thinking deep thoughts around existence and reality and what life really is. This is normal for me when I get to a certain vantage point where cars become ants and people specks of dust. Like sitting in the window seat of an airplane and seeing cities beneath you, the cars on the intersecting lines that we call freeways, the houses and all the greenery we seem to miss when we walk the streets. It is a freeing yet interesting mind space to look down at something that holds your entire existence, yet it looks so tiny and irrelevant. It causes me to ponder the thoughts of time and purpose, remembering how we are only on this planet for such a fraction of a second in the grand scheme of things, and almost acting as a reset before heading back into the world below. This time on top of this little mountain isn’t much different. I find myself reflecting on how so many of the people in this little town probably have rarely left, or even if they have 99% of their lives exist within a few blocks, a few blocks that seem so small from this vantage point. How we all have these little random communities where we live, and most of our lives fall into a small area that doesn’t always feel small. You know that feeling you get when you realize where you are and it sorta hits you hard? I was thinking about all this stuff around where we exist, the extensiveness of our world, and all the tiny intricacies of life when I realized where I am right now. It helps that my mind was already in a pretty deep place, but realizing that I was on top of a small mountain in India, pondering these things of life like it was just another day. As I have mentioned a few times, when you are longterm traveling it starts to feel a bit like regular life and I think it causes me to forget the extreme of the places that I am in. That it feels normal in a way to be sitting on top of this mountain with Vincent talking about the enneagram, or whether or not you would go through chemo if you were told you had a 10% chance of survival. Those are the places my mind also goes sometimes, to the extremes of life and pondering what it all means. It sounds dark, but I even said to Vincent, “what even is the point to it all?” I say that from a perspective of somebody (me) who has an infatuation with life and such a strong curiosity of the unknown, not a depressive state. It is more so said with the tone of an appreciation to be able to sit and ponder those thoughts, and see how somebody else who has been traveling for over a year sees it all. What do I think? I think that is the question we have to spend our lives answering; finding all the different meanings we do, to the point you couldn’t fit them all in a book. The feeling of rolling over and stretching the second you wake up in the morning, or the feeling of wearing a hoodie in the fall, a hug from somebody you love, the ability to get lost in a good novel, the first drive with the windows down after a long winter, the nerves on a first date, laughing so hard you cannot breathe, a warm bed on a cold winter night, runners high, and all the other little feelings we get out of life. I think we keep living, keep exploring, keep enjoying every moment and we get to pick our favorite parts to report back to life. Life is just as curious as we are about the experiences out there, from the most simple of things to the largest bucket list items. Nobody else will ever get to experience it like we do, the little things that make us tick or the big goals. The ability to just be in the position to be able to do it is the point I think, but hey I am only 25 years into this thing and still have so much to experience. Can you tell it is late at night and I am sitting in my bed as I type this? As previously mentioned in a different blog, sometimes nighttime also brings out these feelings and gratitude of life. So combine actively writing at night as I think about being on top of a mountain looking down at thousands of people existing in their own worlds and you get a Henry who is writing about the point of life. I am quite grateful for it though and I am sitting here right now quite giddy with excitement for the ability to experience all these things. Yes, the experiences I am having right now traveling, but also the ones throughout life. The ones I mentioned as my favorite feelings, but honestly all the experiences we get to have. As I am sitting here writing this my mind is getting flooded with memories or feelings from life, overwhelming in a wonderful way. I do not mean to preach about how amazing life is, but right now all these simple feelings are making me so grateful just for the act of being able to experience them. Like the feeling of a bonfire and a blanket, or walking out onto a dock and hearing the creaks and thuds your feet make against it, or sitting down on your couch with a plate of food and a drink to watch a movie, the feeling of the couch enveloping you with the cushions that are just right. I could go on and on and on with this list, but I want you to just sit for a second and think about all of these things that give us a certain feeling. Seriously, take a second and reflect on your day to day life. What are things we do not think about, specifically the little ones that elicit some feeling. It can be the most tiny parts of life, like the feeling of opening your garage door or emptying your pockets at the end of the day, throwing your keys and wallet into the bowl on your nightstand. Take a second and think about all of these moments of life that are so special in such a tiny way, but they are just the most simple example of the beauty that we get to experience so many feelings towards an immense number of things in our life. That by just experiencing life each day and going through whatever it is that we do, we get to feel connected to it and a part of it all. This is coming from the very grateful mind of a deep thinking Henry, so I hope it makes sense. Annnnd that is now the second time I have spoke in the third person in this paragraph so it may be time to end it here.
After we watched most of the sunset the temperate started dropping rather rapidly, so walking out we took some pictures of the hundreds of monkeys hanging around the temple and made out way down. There was a middle-aged German woman who wasn’t a fan of the monkeys so asked if she could walk down with us. A nice conversation around traveling occupied most of the way down. At the bottom a girl and her brother came up to us to ask for money, the boy started playing a string instrument and walking next to us as the girl was skipping and “begging” while doing circles and seemed to be playing a game more than begging. It made me realize that she probably is too young to even realize what she is doing, because after they walked with us for a 20 seconds she got distracted and abandoned her brother to go play with a different kid who had some form of push cart toy. She didn’t even realize that she was begging for money, just following orders of what to do from her parents or older people, even if she just wanted to play and have fun. I felt bad, the innocence of youth still clutching on to a final year or two before her reality catches up with her and shares the truth. We walked the half a kilometer back towards our hostel, first stopping for some dinner where I indulged on yet another kadai paneer with buttered roti. As previously mentioned, I am starting to crave something that isn’t so carb loaded and a change up from the same food I have now been eating for almost a month, besides the pizza I had yesterday of course. I forgot to mention, on the walk back the very last sliver of light was holding onto the horizon, silhouetting a camel and his carriage from a few hundred yards away. It was a perfect shot. I absolutely love the simplicity in a good silhouette and as soon as I saw this composition on our walk I took out my camera and knew it was going to be a favorite of mine. The sharpness of the total blackness of the camel on the very last luminance in the sky directly behind her, with just a hint of color to bring in the warmth of the desert made this shot too good to pass up. It feels like the type of picture I might want framed in my house one day. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
I feel like there could be more to add but I am not sure there needs to be. Today was another day enjoying the process of how life is going, enjoying good company, and soaking in the little moments. I feel more and more content in what solo traveling is looking like for me. I haven’t really felt any lonely feelings in a handful of days and a big part of that is the peace that has been more apparent in my life. I smile as I think about it, honestly I think I am getting better and letting go, at surrendering to life as it unfolds. Which is why I am smiling as I wrap up day 26 with only four days to go, that I am noticing the effects of the muscle that I have been exercising for almost four freaking weeks now. What an absolute gift it is to be here right now in this position and in this mindset. A combination of being so ready for wherever life leads me to next and wanting to stay and make sure I soak in every second of what life is like in the here and now. What a life.
