This is something I wrote. On a plane while lisa was asleep and wanted to share it. I just found it interesting thinking about how much I have changed from being a child into being a genuinely happy 27 year old. Please don't feel the need to read on unless you find this interesting too. The real "blog" of our travels will be appearing soon.
It may come as a surprise that giving up a job I was fighting to glean moments of happiness in to fly across the world is a decision I am glad I made. I miss sporadically seeing my niece and nephew, brothers and sisters, even my estranged mother and father. A healthy kind of missing rather than a gaping hole. A sign that things might be getting better. Like your hand coming back to life after being drained of blood when you fell asleep dribbling on it. It tingles. A missing that says 'I appreciate you being a part of now' rather than 'be what you were way back when'. The decision to 'travel' is scary. I can't play computer games or hide myself in the blanket of 'well we have work tomorrow so don't feel like you are wasting the evening.' Just cuddle up and ignore the gnawing sensation that your getting older and you want more. Watch a movie, make dinner and go to bed ready for tomorrow. You can't afford the train fares to see them every week and besides you're not as close to your friends as you used to be! The Netflix generation. We save money and waste a hell of a lot of time. In the best way ever. Guilt free. Others do it better, pictures appear on Facebook of life being lived no less! Groups of friends in bars, experiences and memories. Somehow I'm coming to learn from experience that sometimes the 1000 words of a picture say more than the words that were actually there. But here I am currently on a plane from Australia to New Zealand to spend 31 days in a metal box with wheels and a lady that claims to not mind me. So why do people 'change' when they travel or get a new job or get older? It's hard to not be a cliche nowadays, to come away, to 'travel' and to do something different and say you 'changed'; be it your waste line or your sense of being. I believe people are changed by what's around them. The maps and patterns learnt to make up who you are and the decisions you make are ever changing through lots of minute interactions you have so frequently they are like a flip book, you don't see the change: it's fluid motion. Instead I would rather let Sociology term what happens when you spend time in a different place as a 'shift in perspective'. I'm not a very logical person with paranoid tendencies and more often than not I am left at the whim of emotions. I think this has a lot to do with my upbringing and a desire for all things to be as simple as life and death.
But logic! 1: firstly the obvious; you are simply put in another space, I mean geographically. We know that your environment has a massive influence on you, the weather, the routine, the people you interact with and the job that constantly shifts your priorities. It goes without saying then that traveling away from this it leaves a gap and as you didn't choose to let these things shape you in the first place, it stands to reason that your mind will again automatically try to 'sync' and fill the void. In England we have a special brand of grey that has a huge effect on us individually and as a nation. We don't give much away, we don't like people to know the absolute truth; be it discomfort at a social situation or disappointment with a meal we have paid for. "Can you believe that woman just sent her still frozen chicken back to the kitchen!? How rude!"I have an unproven theory that countries with weather systems that lend them self to either hot or cold at one time have a completely different effect on a persons emotions and character. If they are hot they accept that they are hot and it shows. After all you can't judge someone for being sweaty when they are in a shirt and tie in 32* with 80% humidity. Another observation is the family oriented spaces in the home, I don't need to mention the intricacies of the effects the family have on us. In some hot countries homes often have a social 'outdoor' area of some kind. Drawing the attention toward one another and a slightly different perspective on the family interactions. Just like heat the cold cuts through the vague and allows a sense of acceptance. It's cold: let's get a bit closer, happier in the comfort that there are steps that can be taken to make you warmer. Just theories obviously but I find it interesting.
Logically number two is next. But like I said I'm not very logical so I mentioned this in one already. 2: The humans we absorb. You absorb the people around you, you can't help the interest in them. That feels like an instinct, maybe a left over defence mechanism to understand strange behaviours and traits. We are all scientists on a sub-conscience level. I was a child the first time I realised I could manipulate the people around me by reflecting their emotions and desires back at them. I didn't mean to. I think I just grew up thinking that this was how human interaction worked. I was always at arms length with my true emotions and could easily mask them allowing others to fill the gap. I was always weirdly jealous of my sister when she flew into fits of rage and smashed a phone against the wall after an argument with her boyfriend. My brain would emulate a reaction but I would temper it to satisfy any witnesses that I valued. Mainly my mother and father. What they thought of me mattered so I controlled myself enough for them to see what they wanted. I wasn't pretending to be someone else I just never really felt the need to be anything else. My family valued themselves on their ability to help others. They are wonderful. I remember a time I was walking home from town holding hands with my mother and balancing on a wall. In my other hand was a balloon my older brother had given me (he was a balloon seller) for my birthday. A boy younger than me was sitting on the wall crying and he only had one shoe on. Within seconds I recognised my mothers desire to help him and swiftly knelt down handing over the balloon. I didn't calculate a reward but on some level I read both people and reflected my mothers emotions back to her to gain acceptance and love. Interesting; as I never felt a lack of these things. My parents made us all feel special somehow. So how does this affect us when we travel. I can only comment from a British perspective and I feel a contrast in the openness in those around me. Not everyone, but the majority. This has to eventually start to change the psychological pigments in our ever changing 'being'.
Number 3: Stepping into somebody else's shoes. Not getting bogged down in your individualism is hard and sometimes you forget that you are stepping into a brand new society as a whole. We have all loved seeing "if you were a child of (insert relative decade)'s then you will remember these!" on Facebook. It's incredible how many of the key memories from our lives we share with complete strangers. The toys, the school punishments, the first kisses and sexual experiences and even that strange period when making your own ring tone made you an actual DJ! This is society and when we travel we try to navigate our current generation without the map of shared experiences that are so key to a generations identity. It's difficult to fit in with locals. On top of that there are mini societies we wander into blindly due to the nature of travelling on a budget. A melting pot of different generations all with a different code of memories. This one really only begins to play with you if you are away for a while but it's there. We pick up running jokes and even the corner stone to our interests is forced to shed a skin. Our sense of humour might change, our taste in films or books. History might become fascinating where before it was sucked lifeless by Mrs Hall's hellish lessons. (Just an example, she was wonderful. She used to stand on the table and hit me when I was cheeky.) beyond the cliches that I have fallen into with a new found love for photography and writing there are many changes in taste that are unforeseen. A love for red wine, avocado and pineapple in a burger. Who knew. Do we 'find ourselves' when we travel? Or do we simply unlock an ability that humans seem to ignore. We adapt, we shift our perspectives. This in itself must affect us, like everything in this world, completely differently. The foundation laid is always sprouting individual responses to everything. Our DNA planted into the soil of our early experiences can never be completely identical. The flip book.
It may come as a surprise that giving up a job I was fighting to glean moments of happiness in to fly across the world is a decision I am glad I made. I miss sporadically seeing my niece and nephew, brothers and sisters, even my estranged mother and father. A healthy kind of missing rather than a gaping hole. A sign that things might be getting better. Like your hand coming back to life after being drained of blood when you fell asleep dribbling on it. It tingles. A missing that says 'I appreciate you being a part of now' rather than 'be what you were way back when'. The decision to 'travel' is scary. I can't play computer games or hide myself in the blanket of 'well we have work tomorrow so don't feel like you are wasting the evening.' Just cuddle up and ignore the gnawing sensation that your getting older and you want more. Watch a movie, make dinner and go to bed ready for tomorrow. You can't afford the train fares to see them every week and besides you're not as close to your friends as you used to be! The Netflix generation. We save money and waste a hell of a lot of time. In the best way ever. Guilt free. Others do it better, pictures appear on Facebook of life being lived no less! Groups of friends in bars, experiences and memories. Somehow I'm coming to learn from experience that sometimes the 1000 words of a picture say more than the words that were actually there. But here I am currently on a plane from Australia to New Zealand to spend 31 days in a metal box with wheels and a lady that claims to not mind me. So why do people 'change' when they travel or get a new job or get older? It's hard to not be a cliche nowadays, to come away, to 'travel' and to do something different and say you 'changed'; be it your waste line or your sense of being. I believe people are changed by what's around them. The maps and patterns learnt to make up who you are and the decisions you make are ever changing through lots of minute interactions you have so frequently they are like a flip book, you don't see the change: it's fluid motion. Instead I would rather let Sociology term what happens when you spend time in a different place as a 'shift in perspective'. I'm not a very logical person with paranoid tendencies and more often than not I am left at the whim of emotions. I think this has a lot to do with my upbringing and a desire for all things to be as simple as life and death.
But logic! 1: firstly the obvious; you are simply put in another space, I mean geographically. We know that your environment has a massive influence on you, the weather, the routine, the people you interact with and the job that constantly shifts your priorities. It goes without saying then that traveling away from this it leaves a gap and as you didn't choose to let these things shape you in the first place, it stands to reason that your mind will again automatically try to 'sync' and fill the void. In England we have a special brand of grey that has a huge effect on us individually and as a nation. We don't give much away, we don't like people to know the absolute truth; be it discomfort at a social situation or disappointment with a meal we have paid for. "Can you believe that woman just sent her still frozen chicken back to the kitchen!? How rude!"I have an unproven theory that countries with weather systems that lend them self to either hot or cold at one time have a completely different effect on a persons emotions and character. If they are hot they accept that they are hot and it shows. After all you can't judge someone for being sweaty when they are in a shirt and tie in 32* with 80% humidity. Another observation is the family oriented spaces in the home, I don't need to mention the intricacies of the effects the family have on us. In some hot countries homes often have a social 'outdoor' area of some kind. Drawing the attention toward one another and a slightly different perspective on the family interactions. Just like heat the cold cuts through the vague and allows a sense of acceptance. It's cold: let's get a bit closer, happier in the comfort that there are steps that can be taken to make you warmer. Just theories obviously but I find it interesting.
Logically number two is next. But like I said I'm not very logical so I mentioned this in one already. 2: The humans we absorb. You absorb the people around you, you can't help the interest in them. That feels like an instinct, maybe a left over defence mechanism to understand strange behaviours and traits. We are all scientists on a sub-conscience level. I was a child the first time I realised I could manipulate the people around me by reflecting their emotions and desires back at them. I didn't mean to. I think I just grew up thinking that this was how human interaction worked. I was always at arms length with my true emotions and could easily mask them allowing others to fill the gap. I was always weirdly jealous of my sister when she flew into fits of rage and smashed a phone against the wall after an argument with her boyfriend. My brain would emulate a reaction but I would temper it to satisfy any witnesses that I valued. Mainly my mother and father. What they thought of me mattered so I controlled myself enough for them to see what they wanted. I wasn't pretending to be someone else I just never really felt the need to be anything else. My family valued themselves on their ability to help others. They are wonderful. I remember a time I was walking home from town holding hands with my mother and balancing on a wall. In my other hand was a balloon my older brother had given me (he was a balloon seller) for my birthday. A boy younger than me was sitting on the wall crying and he only had one shoe on. Within seconds I recognised my mothers desire to help him and swiftly knelt down handing over the balloon. I didn't calculate a reward but on some level I read both people and reflected my mothers emotions back to her to gain acceptance and love. Interesting; as I never felt a lack of these things. My parents made us all feel special somehow. So how does this affect us when we travel. I can only comment from a British perspective and I feel a contrast in the openness in those around me. Not everyone, but the majority. This has to eventually start to change the psychological pigments in our ever changing 'being'.
Number 3: Stepping into somebody else's shoes. Not getting bogged down in your individualism is hard and sometimes you forget that you are stepping into a brand new society as a whole. We have all loved seeing "if you were a child of (insert relative decade)'s then you will remember these!" on Facebook. It's incredible how many of the key memories from our lives we share with complete strangers. The toys, the school punishments, the first kisses and sexual experiences and even that strange period when making your own ring tone made you an actual DJ! This is society and when we travel we try to navigate our current generation without the map of shared experiences that are so key to a generations identity. It's difficult to fit in with locals. On top of that there are mini societies we wander into blindly due to the nature of travelling on a budget. A melting pot of different generations all with a different code of memories. This one really only begins to play with you if you are away for a while but it's there. We pick up running jokes and even the corner stone to our interests is forced to shed a skin. Our sense of humour might change, our taste in films or books. History might become fascinating where before it was sucked lifeless by Mrs Hall's hellish lessons. (Just an example, she was wonderful. She used to stand on the table and hit me when I was cheeky.) beyond the cliches that I have fallen into with a new found love for photography and writing there are many changes in taste that are unforeseen. A love for red wine, avocado and pineapple in a burger. Who knew. Do we 'find ourselves' when we travel? Or do we simply unlock an ability that humans seem to ignore. We adapt, we shift our perspectives. This in itself must affect us, like everything in this world, completely differently. The foundation laid is always sprouting individual responses to everything. Our DNA planted into the soil of our early experiences can never be completely identical. The flip book.