The Modern Wonderer

It’s been a dizzying two weeks. Two weeks ago I was living in a house in Denver, Colorado, surrounded by sun and brown dead grass and now I’m in Oregon, listening to the rain as it drips lazily on the roof of the camper, smelling the deep rich scents of wet earth and decaying wood. Some might think I was crazy, boxing up my life and moving into a camper full-time, at least for a little while. Maybe I am. Yet I’ve done the conventional for most of my life and all it really got me was anxiety. Needing to keep up with this expectation, that label, that definition of ‘being an adult’, ‘acting your age’, ‘making it’. So when the opportunity came to break free from all of that I took it, and here I am!

I’ve been on another journey too, for at least the last couple years if not longer. Questioning the labels and definitions and expectations I had for myself, what society told me I should be/want to be and finding something interesting. The more I question things, the more I come up with an answer: I don’t really care what society says. I want to make this life mine.

There’s a lot of ways I ‘don’t work’ according to society. I’m a 40 something woman who made a choice to not have children. I’ve been in a long-term stable relationship with a man whom I have no intention of ever ‘legally’ marrying. I work remotely, and thrive at it. I believe in God and Faith, but I refuse to bow to any organized religion that seeks to push me into a mold. There’s a whole lot more, but I think you get the picture.

Now I’ve added another to the list. Roaming the countryside looking for a new home.

I used to be really ashamed at not fitting in the mold. I gave up being a writer and artist for the longest time ‘because that’s not what you do’. I didn’t take risks as a kid. I’ve let women shame me for not wanting children. I let the church shame me for my body and my sexuality. I let my father shame me for not being smart enough, good enough. I let people use me and my shame to manipulate me. But the greatest day of my life was when I started asking myself why I was ashamed for being the person that I knew I was. Why I cared what some random people called ‘society’ wanted. Why I cared what people, brainwashed by ‘society’ into thinking they had to fit in, were pressuring me to do the same thing. I started seeing how much energy people put into hate and fear and violence, masking it as ‘creating a moral society’ or ‘protecting’ some ambiguous thing, when really they were just ignorant and scared and instead of asking questions would rather just squash whatever it was they didn’t understand.

‘Society’ hates it when you don’t want to fit in, and does everything in its power to get you to conform. I used to think this was a good thing, but now I see it for what it is. When you are yourself, unashamed, bound by nothing but your own morals and individuality, you hold up a mirror. People don’t like it because it challenges their world view, makes them ask uncomfortable questions of themselves that they can’t answer. So, it’s easier to knock you down, break the mirror, rather than facing themselves and their own shame.

I think as humans we are taught from young children that we are the pinnacle of everything. Everything is about us. Main character syndrome. Everything bows to us. We have dominion over everything and we need to control everything. But as we traveled through Arizona and I stood on the rim of the Grand Canyon, I never felt so small and insignificant. I was surrounded by rocks that were hundreds of millions of years old. A giant chasm ripped into the earth by a tiny river, and land masses moving over spans of time that I cannot comprehend. Compared to that canyon, my life was a speck of dust on the wind.

And I loved it! Everyone should feel that small at some point in their lives. Maybe then our egos and pride wouldn’t get so much in the way of us enjoying life.

As we traveled through the vast expanses of Nevada and Utah, I couldn’t help but wonder what it was like for the indigenous peoples of the land, or the first settlers who had crossed those deserts. Where the very land wanted to kill you, knowing that a slight miscalculation like leaving a day or two late in the season or veering a little left instead of right could mean the very difference between life or death. Taking months to cross what takes us now a few hours.

In all the driving, you definitely saw the ego of the world. Semi drivers who would just change lanes when we were beside them, even though there’s no way they missed our giant trailer coming up behind them, because they needed over and they were on a mission. People in cars who zoomed in and out of lanes, too worried about being held up or being late, to realize how much they were endangering the other drivers around them instead of just taking a minute and chilling out. Drivers who would intentionally start drifting over into our lane, inches from the front of our truck, to make us back off so they could slip into a lane to get to an exit because they just couldn’t have gotten behind us and waited a few seconds more. People who would just walk into you because they were too preoccupied to see the human being in front of them. Or people who would make snide remarks to themselves, but just loud enough that you could hear, then watching them smirk as they waited for you to confront them about it. Negative, nasty energy that just made me sick.

Yet there was great times too already. Like the guy we met in New Mexico who wrote a book on music and loves teaching people about it. Or the random couple we met at the Grand Canyon as we laughed about a local ground squirrel who had approached us completely sure that we should share our peanut butter sandwiches with him (no we didn’t feed him, yes it’s horrible that people feed animals people food and they get dependent, but yes he was incredibly stinking cute as he begged and then gave us the side-eye hoping to guilt us into feeding him). Or the neighborhood bar we found that welcomed us in like one of the locals (best bar food I’ve ever had).

There’s so much more to wonder and ask questions about as I take this new adventure on. It’s an adventure I think people should take. Maybe not selling everything they own and hitting the road. But getting out of your world view. Opening your mind to other thoughts and opinions, seeing what lies beyond your town, your state. Because sometimes I think we get too wrapped up in ourselves and conforming to ‘society’, playing by the ‘rules’, even when all those things are just made-up, subjective thoughts enforced by god-knows-who. Sometimes we need to stand on the edge of a canyon. Sometimes we need to feel small. Sometimes we need to see the small moments in order to connect to the larger things in life. Like love and humanity and kindness and hope.

Going forward, I chose me. No shame. No guilt. I choose hope. And in this current world of violence and fear and hate, I think all of us can use a little hope and light.

Until next time!