In Pursuit of Self
I was looking for newness — both within myself and without — and in forgoing familiarity, I was giving myself permission to stumble upon remnants of the past, delve into the ambiguity of the future, and piece it all together to reestablish what it meant to be, well, me. Right then, in the present. Nothing more, nothing less.
Two months ago, I was itching to get out of New York City. My wayward thoughts were getting swept up in the frenetic pace of the metropolis, and I had far too many to-do lists scribbled onto Post-it notes dotting the wall above my desk. I could feel myself mentally checking out as I was dragged through the undercurrent of deadlines, meetings and Word documents that comprised the end of my spring semester. My body was in motion, but my brain was burnt out.
Worse still, I was beginning to associate those pale yellow squares with a special kind of anxiety. Let’s call it Post-it-itis.
Any non-native of the city (or hell, probably most natives too) will tell you that part of the appeal of the Big Apple is how great it looks in the rearview mirror as you drive away from it — and how, even then, it does not care to cater to your every whimpering need. The fact that I was feeling overwhelmed by the bustle of day-to-day NYC living was definitely not a novel emotion, nor was my desire to escape from it.
But it wasn’t just the city I was itching to get away from, now was it?
Truth be told, it never really is.
Someone wise once told me that most people travel for one of two reasons: to get closer to themselves or to get away from themselves. To discover or to distance, to forgive or to forget.
Two months ago, I was faced with my first “summer vacation” in years wherein I didn’t have a job, an internship, an income, or a plan. The uncertainty of how I would be able to make the next few months work — or the next few years, for that matter — loomed large over my head, the question of “what next?” often followed by an irritating parade of “what if’s?”
The struggle of my Post-it-itis was real.
Two of my friends in the city were going through similar transitional phases, having left jobs they had outgrown in favor of what we chose to call “freedom” (not to be confused with “unemployment”). Over breakfast one morning, we talked about the need for some serious soul-searching, and our collective desire to travel that summer, to try our hand at all things new. So we hatched a plan.
Over the course of five days in June, we would make our way from Los Angeles up to San Francisco by way of Big Sur, through the Redwoods to the greenery of Portland and Seattle, and finally cap off our adventure with an epic 13-hour overnight schlep back down to the Bay Area. We would all be home (me, to Los Angeles, and they, back to NYC) just in time for Father’s Day. Perfect. We had a mission.
But was it to get closer to ourselves or to get away from ourselves?
June rolled around, and I found myself thinking about this duality a lot as we traversed the hills, trees, and highways of the west coast. I watched the beach fade into cliffs rise into cityscapes merge into forests melt into the smell of anticipation before a Pacific Northwest rainstorm. As the car hugged the curves of the coast on our way up north, I tried to pinpoint where I fell into that spectrum, and why it felt so necessary for us to take this trip, at this point in our lives, with these friends.
There are no accidents, after all. Only a belated sense of understanding. All signs and events had pointed to making this imagined trip a reality. And what I discovered was that I was overthinking my own intentions.
At the root of it all, I was looking for newness — both within myself and without — and in forgoing familiarity, I was giving myself permission to stumble upon remnants of the past, delve into the ambiguity of the future, and piece it all together to reestablish what it meant to be, well, me. Right then, in the present. Nothing more, nothing less.
*****
On the second day of the road trip, the three of us camped out in Eureka, Calif., just shy of the southernmost edge of Redwood National Park. Our plan was to drive into the woods and hike up to a good spot to watch the sunset before retiring for the night. We’d just driven the nearly seven hours up from San Francisco, and were looking forward to a good night’s rest.
Naturally, this did not happen.
Instead, we ended up somehow driving either too far or not far enough to where the camp ground employee had directed us, and consequently, getting lost. The sun was still relatively high in the sky, but our plan to hike properly and find a resting point for this sunset watching was looking less and less likely as the minutes ticked by. Just as we were about to shrug off the disappointment and head back to the campgrounds, however, we drove up and over a hill that opened onto the most beautiful stretch of highway I have ever seen.
We pulled over.
Two lanes going in two directions, framed on either side by what can only be described as majestic, natural, brilliance. To the left of us, rolling waves, powerful and crashing and drenched in sunlight. The sheer force of the water smashing again and again onto the beach was unnerving, the waves inching closer and closer to the thin stretch of land we stood upon.
To the right of us, however, there was complete tranquility. The beginning of the Redwood forest began at the edge of a body of water — perhaps a lake? — that was engulfed in green. The reflection of the trees and the sky in the water was crisp and clear, the water still. The scene seemed to be holding its breath. The moon was faded but visible in the sky just above the trees.
It was like the collision of two worlds, two kinds of natural beauty in one place. It was as though someone had commissioned God or the Universe to create a space on earth that couldn’t be described in words, that couldn’t be captured by a camera lens, that could only be experienced in the moment. My mind reeled.
The scene felt like an external manifestation of my mind — of our minds. Water on either side, thoughts both frenetic and still. The pull of the moon, the setting sun.
Everything was connected, interlaced, intertwined. And it all made absolute, perfect sense.
*****
The remainder of the trip unfurled the way all journeys do: unexpectedly and exactly the way it was meant to. There was a forward momentum behind our travels. And because we were physically in motion, our brains were forced to counterbalance that movement with stillness.
When I think back to that stretch of highway now, my takeaway is this: to find that place again, to try to get back to that mental space, even, would be impossible. And what would be the point of finding that exact spot again anyway? There is no such thing as return. As in, you can’t go home again (thanks for the insight, Thomas Wolfe).
But that’s the beauty of movement, of traveling. That you know how fleeting it is, and how trying to recreate or remake or retell any or every moment of the trip is damn near impossible. The layers of life, the passage of time, don’t allow for that. Attempting to explain the way the sun drowned that night, or how the moon lit our way back to camp, or why the three of us were lulled into a comfortable silence as our car bumped its way back toward civilization — these things were experiential, inexplicable.
Unbelievable.
Back in NYC, on a daily basis, the three of us had been caught in a never-ending cycle of to-do and should-have-done, need-to-get and want-to-do, but our road trip reminded us that it truly is the journey and not the destination that counts. Without the comfort of routine, we had to be completely present in our actions and our thoughts in order to soak in the beauty of the moment. To soak in the newness of the moment. We kept moving to still our minds, to keep pace in our pursuit of this little thing called meaning.
The pursuit. What matters, we discovered, is movement and evolution and progress. Speed doesn’t matter. We all have our own races to run. Endurance only sometimes matters, because we can’t control how long or short our journeys will be. What does matter, in travel and on the road and even when we’re sitting still at our desks, is awareness. Knowing that we are always moving — in body, heart, mind and soul — and being fully there to experience it.
Moving is living. Nothing that’s been said has ever been so true. And we keep developing and evolving and shedding and soaking in the important facets of life and love and everything in-between because of this very aphorism.
Moving is living.
I wasn’t expecting to find answers just because I was on the road, but I have trust that my mind will make the right connections — be it sooner or later — somewhere down the line. The questions I’ve learned to ask are less “what next?” and “what if?” and more “what now?” and “why not?”
And everything is everything, because the process, the in-between, the travel, the movement, is where we find ourselves, piece by piece, bit by bit, mile by mother-effin’, road-trippin’ mile.
