You’ve felt it. I know you have. The creeping feeling of a deep anxiety washing away what could have been serenity like water roaring out of a broken dam attacking the peaceful river below. You feel it, but you aren’t sure why you’re feeling anxious… “I should be doing something,” the feeling tells you. And if I was still studying at Berkeley, that feeling might be quite helpful: a reality check meant to slap me awake from whatever escapades I’m involved in strike me with awareness of the fact that I have a paper due tomorrow, an event to plan, some emails to send out, and two midterm exams next week to study for. But I’m not in California – I’m in Africa. I don’t lead an organization here, the academic responsibility here is minor compared to back home, and most of my time here is not scheduled but free.
Even so, I still can’t help feeling this anxiety. I remember it coming on as me and my three new friends (Theo, Devin, and Andrew) indulged in some American nostalgia at 2-for-1 burger night at Rhapsody’s bar on the way back from the gigantic Makola Market in the heart of Accra. Suddenly, right as I finished my mushroom burger (ha, most of you probably knew I was going to order that, didn’t you?), I felt the anxiety smother me and mentioned it aloud. Andrew replied by stating the obvious – interestingly obvious in my mind but not so to my emotional state at the time, “but there’s nothing to be anxious about. You can decide what tomorrow looks like, you have nothing due, and so is the next day. And the day after that.” On our walk home, the sky becoming dark as the conversation slowed, I found myself asking everyone, “so what’s our plan for the night? And tomorrow?” Devin, had already been here for a semester looked a little dumbfounded, “whatever, man.” Ha, you might not believe it, but for me these were wise words.
I’m so used to planning things back home – what my plans are for the evening, what my plans are for tomorrow. I don’t have to stick to the plan, I just kind of feel more comfortable knowing what might be ahead of me. And to be fair, I’m much more go-with-the-flow than many others back home; I distinctly remember Nitzan being so frustrated when I refused to make exact plans with her ahead of time, I always wanted to keep my planning flexible. This was a skill I learned in my youth group in high school, in Dr. Seuss AZA, to feel comfortable in flexibility because reality was only going to snicker at your plans. But this wasn’t about concrete planning vs. flexible planning – the challenge I am faced with here is the art of not planning at all. The art of wandering.
The wanderer is a figure that has a mythical quality – swaying where the wind takes him, finding journeys and adventures that might be right under others’ noses, and being ever-connected to the present in a profoundly unique way. It’s kind of like letting go completely when you’re on vacation, but that’s only part of it. As I borrow from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance yet again, it’s about creating a quality of life that comes from being in tune with the world around you. There is no longer as much of a separation between the subject and the object, between me and the world: there is no need to think about what an activity will do for me (like if someone asks me to go explore the nearby city of Elmina one weekend) because that is a question of utility. The wanderer is not interested in utility because the wanderer is not separate from his surroundings – he is one with them.
But I want to go one step further. I want to not only become the wanderer, but master wandering as a way of being. I don’t want to be consumed by the wanderer – helplessly unable to return to the busy planner I used to be - I just want him in my bag of tricks so he can be turned on and off depending on my circumstance. I want to be able to be in the present moment or contemplating about the past or strategizing for the future when it suits me. And if I can do that at the bend of a whim, that would be mastery. I’ll keep you updated on how that goes J.
Tough life... It sounds like you will want not only to master wandering, but also PhD wandering. And you are already BS-ing (pun intended) wandering now.
ReplyDeleteThere are many ways to wander; you can wander off and you can wander toward something. I personally would prefer the latter, because it is easy to be lost in the former.
The critical point is that in addition to just switching it on and off, you will need to find the right timing. For example, I turn wandering off every day in the morning and turn it back on when I go to sleep. I can teach you how to do that, I have a post-grad on the topic ;-)