Observations While Traveling
- There is a side to my personality that is extremely grating, I am just very rarely informed of it and can forget it exists.[1]
- Another thing that I often forget: How much my perspective on life has been shaped (warped?) by philosophy, sociology and systems thinking. It makes me alien in some ways. Basic assumptions and explanations (and what I find interesting) for why things are the way they are, are quite often different from common sense. Or are only "joining common sense" by mobilizing a whole shadow army of extra explanations and assumptions in my head. This mostly works at certain speeds in controlled environments, but can lead to misunderstandings and conflicts when I have to act quickly, as the facade disintegrates.[2]
- My most toxic trait is that on a deep level I find humans and their passions, emotions and hang-ups deeply suspect. I find their longing for entanglement not really endearing. And at the same time I long for deep connectedness and belonging. In the end I want to be loved without the leg work and negotiations on my part. I find this very ugly about me in some ways and just profanely "modern" in another.
- Traveling, understood as an activity of going somewhere without responsibilities can be fun.[3]
- Traveling is a form of betting. And you can get addicted to it.
- Non-solo traveling is best done as a form of service: A good traveling companion seems to be part sin-eater and part morale officer.[4]
- Most traveling has been enjoyable in part because it was challenging: It makes me more aware of who I am and what I value. It also makes me aware of how little I know about me and others and the world at large. And how all of that is good and bad, depending on the context.[5]
- I need to really "get out" at least once every year.
- In a relationship: Traveling is a powerful form of myth making: And myth making is a powerful form of constructing a positive future.[6]
- My identity is in extreme flux while traveling as are the relationships through which I construct my identity. Just as facts have to be stabilized by mobilizing the right actors and this stabilization being a somewhat precarious process that involves more than just the actor (taken as the subject) constructing a given fact (taken as the object). While traveling, I have to deal with the fact that less actors are being mobilized by me.[7] Instead I'm the one being mobilized. And that means that I can't guarantee the same identity to my loved ones or myself: I tend to be more volatile and less predictable, even to myself.[8]
My assumption is: I am rarely informed, because I am also extremly self-observant and self-critical ...and wordy if this part of my personality gets triggered. Ain't nobody got time for that. ↩︎
I like to think that I offer a "compatibility layer" around all this more complicated aspect to my worldview. ↩︎
I have yet to actually experience a whole vacation or at least a substantial portion of it that fits this description, if I'm honest. ↩︎
Another way to put this: Traveling is easier if you have the right kind of bad memory. ↩︎
The important part, in other words, is how it makes me aware of the context. What the hell is water and all that. ↩︎
See An Updated Manifest Destiny - Or How Myth Making Might Intentionally Change The World After All (Comment on Andrew Dana Hudson's "Space is Dead. Why Do We Keep Writing About It?"). ↩︎
I have a hard time gauging if this means more more or less actors need to pass through me while I'm on vacation, I suspect it's more. ↩︎
In some ways the opposite is true: I am reduced to my "traveler identity", as opposed to my "auto-anthropological identity", which is much less about me constructing the me that I'm most interested in and more about me constructing a simplified version of me that conforms to a whole bunch of expectations - and also failing frequently to do so as the pressure rises and getting increasingly fed up atempting it as the days go on. ↩︎
-
← Previous
DailyDogo 1382 🐶 -
Next →
DailyDogo 1383 🐶