This entry originally started as a rant against American ideals, a vent for my frustrations with the expectations to follow the norm and the rigid definition of success in my home country. After my time at University I felt trapped; it seemed that I had to be doing something, headed down some path toward a goal that had only become more vague as I questioned what I wanted out of life with increasing urgency. My desire to see the world almost began to seem like an escape plan, even to myself, and the need for justification I felt every time I told someone I just wanted to travel increased to the point where I was unsure of my own reasoning. I typed two pages, but then stopped. It sounded angry. It sounded whiny. Worst of all, it did not sound at all like the views and the open mind that I have worked hard to discern and develop in myself. It was garbage. If my laptop could crumple it would be in the rubbish bin now.
The main reason I originally had entertained traveling as a lifestyle was to figure out the perspectives of people from entirely different backgrounds, weigh them, and integrate them into my own. The most important and relevant education I’ve had to date comes from experience and relationships I’ve developed. Through the people I've met, no matter how radically different or similar, I have always come away with something, some new insight as to why people live their lives the way they do and what they value. The only constant I've found in these views is that, subject-to-subject, they are invariably different. I've met people that sacrifice all vices in the name of health. I've found people that put wealth and security above all. I've dined with possumers who claimed that it gave them livelihood through a mouthful of broken teeth and deer flesh. Unwaveringly, people find meaning and joy through life in radically different pursuits, no matter how seemingly simple or abstract. Every person has a unique take on life. This realization froze my fingers over the keyboard. To attack one system of values, no matter how different than mine, was to do the very thing I've vowed to avoid through travel and broadening my own life understanding.
I have been living in Christchurch now for about two months, and my last month has been spent living with a family, the Larasons. The blue-collar gods smiled when I mentioned to my friend Amanda that I had tiled and it so happened that her family was in need of someone with tiling experience. One bathroom, a few outside walls and a couple odd jobs later here I am, set to finally make my move north. The time I have spent here has been interesting. Though largely for financial regions, I've still managed quite a bit of fun, including playing human foosball at the MTV Snowjam concert and gazing at Jupiter and a globular cluster through a telescope twice the size of me. The bulk of my time however has been occupied by life with the Larasons.
Jerry, Rebecca, Walter and Amanda expatriated from America 18 years ago. Both kids are thoroughly Kiwi, while Jerry and Rebecca hover somewhere between. They are all outspoken about their viewpoints, and not afraid to challenge your ideals and justification behind them. Frankly, I found it frustrating at first! I quickly found myself defending every action and thought I had, defending the very country in which even I had found what I thought of as faults. If I mentioned I thought America offered many freedoms, it was met with "well that's what the government wants you to think." I defended my country. If I had a coffee, I was handed a pamphlet on all of its adverse health effects. I defended my habit. Defense became my first response, rather than contemplation and a more calculated rebuttal.
What I was defending against was simply a point of view, and though radically different than my own, with all the same validity. When I have an infected cut, I put antiseptic ointment on it. Rebecca takes gummy-bear vitamins with ambrotose. We are both here to talk about it, aren't we? Everybody has something worthwhile to say; an opinion, by its very definition, can never be wrong! In my time with the Larasons I've learned how to better take a statement from a foreign school of thought, set it aside for a moment, and evaluate it against my own, as well as to try and figure out where it is coming from. Though another one may not alter or even sway mine, how interesting would life be if printed and not handwritten? As we become through our life experiences, so become our thoughts and values! Living here has given me the chance to share quarters with people of a different and intriguing way of thinking, and has been the root of many interesting conversations.
My thoughts have turned to my trip north. My car is jacked up over the pit in Jerry's shop currently, and with a new cv joint and a lot of help from Jerry it will be roadworthy tomorrow! I recently bought a tent, a mountain bike, a sleeveless hoodie, a guitar, and two string-less ukuleles. I have not given up showering or eating meat yet, but at this rate we'll see...I have no plan. I have just enough money to be uncomfortable. I have a random couchsurf at a 67-year-old lady’s flat when I get to Tauranga. This is in a week. I also bought a can opener, three cans of tuna and some Ritz crackers.
Seven consecutive months of winter has turned me over to quite a bit of introspection. What does my current situation say about me and the values I hold? Functionally materialistic maybe? I like things, things I can use and things that make noise I can listen to and things that bring me pleasure. You can say the same about people who own yachts and backpack in slippers. However, my materialism seems to be more geared towards practicality. Am I comfortable with discomfort? If my ears are cold I never put a hat on until I can’t feel them anymore. My lack of a home for the next week or so, or any place to go for that matter, doesn’t concern me much either. This may relate to my hopeless romanticism, in this case the image of me sitting on the hood of my car in no more than a sleeveless t-shirt, bawling kumbaya at a fur seal. I also have found I enjoy awkward situations when abroad, there is always a great chance to pick up some nuance of a new culture while playing on your margin of error as a foreigner, however embarrassing this can be at times.
However others may view me, my life situation has come from the thoughts and values that I’ve come to find tangible through my own unique experience. It will never be the same as anybody’s, and acceptance of this fact as well as a willingness to realize that the same is true of others is a more daunting task often than it sounds. To gather ideas and learn from the life experiences of others, experiences foreign to any other person, requires first an ability to listen. To REALLY listen. To seek out the “why” behind their ideas, and to accept them as entirely valid for the person expressing them. Only then can you truly weigh the values of others against your own and see if any strike home with you or can be found in your own life experience. It is only through accepting an opinion as an absolute truth to that particular person that you can learn from them. This last month has shown me how hard this can be to do, as well as how enlightening it can be once you are able to.
I hope to meet many people over the next week. I hope I come upon a few hitchers simply to be able to help them out and chat about life here. I hope I find a wandering soul I can lend a harmonica while I wail away on a shitty guitar until my fingernails bleed. However, I have planned a solitary path for the moment. I have decided to head north through Rangiora, simply because I have to pick up my useless ukuleles there. After that I don’t know. What I do know is that any strangers I meet along the way I will give the most open ears possible, for they, like me, are just a person with one view, one human experience, and many stories to share.
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