Barber Shop Therapy
A rambling introduction, practically nothing about the bike trip and some unsolicited life advice from a complete amateur.
In 13 days, I will be embarking on the adventure of a lifetime. Riding a bicycle 4000km through the Andes mountains to the ‘end of the world’ at the southern tip of Argentina with three friends. We’ve got no return ticket. The extent of my mechanical bike knowledge begins and ends at changing a flat, and I speak roughly 7 words of Spanish. Naturally I’m freaking out a little — and not just about the ride ahead. The recurring question in my mind is: what the hell am I doing? What comes next?
I graduated from university this past May, stepping off the polished wooden floors of business school directly into a pair of steel-toed boots and pile of muddy sticks. I put my Bcomm to work planting trees in northern Alberta for three months. I had planted one season previously, after first year of university, and it pretty well flipped my perspective on life upside-down. The manual labour, the isolation, the mental endurance and the wonderful people contributed to a major attitude adjustment and realignment of priorities. I came back to school in second year disenchanted with the commercial focus of my program, leading me to take a slew of courses that expanded my academic horizons. Contrasting these with my traditional business courses, I began to formulate my own world view that fell somewhere in between.
Third year took me on exchange to the French Alps. I spent plenty of time alone in the mountains, hiking and camping and thinking. I hitch-hiked and couch-surfed and lived off the kindness of complete strangers. I almost fell off a mountain, snuck across an international border in the trunk of a car after accidentally hiking into a country without my papers, and was revived by the Moroccan red cross in an airport terminal (don’t brush your teeth with the tap water). I am incredibly fortunate to have had the opportunity to study and travel overseas and the entire experience left a deep impression on me. The time away from my home university allowed me to appreciate why I decided to go to the school in the first place and I returned reinvigorated and ready to embrace all of the ups and downs of my final three semesters.
I felt the pressure to try my hand in the professional realms of my degree, and after a worthwhile experience during the summer of third year working in the fast-paced advertising world of Toronto, I decided what I really needed was to give myself some breathing room after graduation to figure out what I wanted from life. My housemate and I happened across a video about a man who cycled form Oregon to Argentina and decided such a trip offered the perfect balance of adventure, cultural exposure and physical challenges. We wrote up a contract at 2am at our kitchen table and signed our commitment to doing a cycling trip in South America after graduation.
Being surrounded by friends who were recruiting for full time employment after school started to corrode the conviction with which I would tell people about my post-grad plans. Christmas dinner table inquiries from relatives about what I was going to do with my Bcomm started to plant seeds of doubt and by the time I returned to school for my final semester in January I was thinking about alternative options to planting.
Fourth year flew by: I loved my courses, felt comfortable and familiar with the school, had a solid group of friends. I felt like I had come full circle, learning to appreciate my privileged place in business school in a new light. I was hungry to learn as much as possible from my brilliant professors, and I was finally taking engaging subjects that compelled me to apply myself fully. I was starting to carve out a path outside of the traditional four streams presented to us in first year as business career options. But where was this path leading, after graduation? I still don’t know, but am excited to find out.
After exams finished I grabbed my shovel, packed up my tent and headed west once more. On the plane from Vancouver to Prince George I had a brief spell of self-doubt. What was I doing? Why was I going back to 11 hour days of back-breaking work, swarming bugs, sleet rain and scorching heat when my friends were going travelling and then starting their impressive business careers? This question was answered three months later when I put my quarter of a millionth tree in the ground on the last day of my second season. The feeling of fulfillment in my callused hands, aching back and full lungs made me buzz. Every time I buy a coffee now, I count how many trees it’s costing me. I have a renewed appreciation for the value of hard-earned money, and I spend it more wisely.
After the season, I spent time hitching rides around the Rockies and visiting friends. I met people who inspired a renewed faith in the diversity of paths to fulfillment that can be taken in life. I stayed with a group of badass women working at a tea hut high above Lake Louise, smiling and serving tea to hikers and tourists by day, and exploring the alpine every evening. I stayed with friends who have carved out a beautiful community and life in a small mountain town. I met a young man who started roasting coffee when he was 15 and who now sells to many of the cafes in the elk valley and beyond (check out Rooftop Coffee Roasters).
Towards the end of my travels I got a haircut. My barber was an Irish woman who told me that she doesn’t think she could ever be happier than she is in her current job. She told me that if she wants to travel, she can pack scissors and a comb in her bag and work anywhere in the world. She explained that while she is a barber by trade she is a therapist by consequence. People vent to her about their problems, excitedly chatter about accomplishments, and ask advice about lovers. And she didn’t even have to pay a fortune to get a degree in therapy. Best part, though? Every client leaves feeling better and more confident with their fresh chop.
A friend recently directed me towards Hunter S. Thompson’s letter to a friend on finding meaning and leading a purposeful life. What I took away was this: do not focus so much on a goal, but rather on carving out a life, a path, that will allow for development and application of your strengths. It should not be the end goal (being a lawyer, owning a Ferrari, visiting 7 continents) that is the focus. Rather we should think about how we want to live daily in the pursuit of such a goal, and choose a path that best aligns. The end goal is secondary to the means by which we achieve it.
In this sense, I believe my barber was onto something. Maybe her passion is to talk to people and help them. But let’s say for arguments sake that she hates school and so, in attempting to become a therapist she would have become frustrated and convinced that she must be better suited to an entirely different profession. The goal would have seemed impossible, causing her to choose some other direction. Instead, she started cutting hair, which she enjoys. She travels and works and talks to people and helps them. Maybe someday she will become a therapist. But then maybe she already is one.
In the past four years I have learned a few things that I believe to be of some significance, and will try to sum them up below. These are some of the core principles around which I am centring my mindset going into our cycling trip. This is a running list, a work in progress and as I continue to learn and grow it may change entirely. Usually these lists are written by successful professors, business tycoons, politicians and authors who’ve had many years to experience life and refine their thoughts. I think it’s worth writing one at this stage of life if for no other reason than to laugh at it in a few years. I’m 22 and so I ask you to please take this with the heftiest of grains of salt.
Do something.
“…and there’s the crux. Is it worth giving up what I have, to look for something better? I don’t know — is it? Who can make that decision but you? But even by DECIDING TO LOOK, you go a long way toward making the choice”. — Hunter S. Thompson
Inaction is the enemy. If you find yourself unhappy, do something — anything. Worried about getting a job? Search online, and send out 5 resumes. If one person gets back to you, and all you get is 5 minutes on the phone, at least you’ve taken a step. Spending too much money? Make yourself a budget for the next month. It doesn’t have to be a big undertaking. But doing something -anything- is better than nothing. The best way to learn is by experience, so even if you screw it up, you’ll know what not to do moving forward.
The grass is always greener somewhere else.
When you’re planting trees in the rain, nothing sounds better than a cubicle and comfortable office chair in a warm building. When you’re toiling away in a cubicle, nothing sounds more exhilarating than being in the remote bush reforesting the country. Spend your time wishing you were somewhere else, and when you get there you’ll kick yourself for not taking advantage of where you’ve just been.
There is strength in diversity.
I know, it sounds like a bank’s HR department 2018 staffing slogan. But it’s the truth. How will you console yourself when you start to doubt your path in life if you never tried anything else? If you are privileged enough to have options, then I really do think it is your duty to experience as much as possible while you are young and relatively free. Take classes that challenge your views, work jobs that make you uncomfortable. I have worked in National Parks, planted trees, helped advertise chocolate, and started and sold a small business. I believe I am a more compassionate person for understanding why my co-workers in each case do what they do. You’ll also be a far more effective negotiator if you can draw on experience to understand someone else’s point of view.
Live in the present.
I know — how cliché. A teacher once told me something that stuck: Living in the past has a tendency for depression. Fretting about the future has a tendency for anxiety. So there really is no choice, but to live in the present. As someone who is between my undergrad (the ‘best years of my life’) and a completely uncertain future, I feel this very acutely. I’m not convinced that there is a one-size-fits-all answer as to HOW to live presently, but even the awareness that we should do so is a step in the right direction.
Believe the stories you tell yourself, and learn from your mistakes.
I had a professor who told me that in order to make decisions in life, we must tell ourselves stories. As one of the most indecisive people in the world, I was intrigued and asked him to elaborate. Here’s how I understood it: Every single time we make a decision, we are telling ourself a story to justify the choice. For example when you buy something you can’t really afford, you sit in the store telling yourself the story that you need or deserve said item. When you go home, you can either start to question whether you made the right purchase, and ruin the excitement and satisfaction of your splurge, or you can be absolutely convicted in your decision and move on with your life. Maybe you can’t pay your rent later that month because of your irrational purchase, and you realize you messed up. Learn from that, and keep it in mind so that the next time you’re tempted to live beyond your means, you’ll tell yourself a different story (“I don’t need it, it’s not worth it”). But what is the point of causing every decision you make to fill you with anxiety and doubt? Of the same token, when you decide to take (or not take) an opportunity in life, you must tell yourself the story that you are doing the right thing. Go confidently in that direction, until you stumble; learn, adjust, and continue. There is absolutely no point in doing something half-assed, this I can say from experience. It is my belief that the happiest people in the world are the ones who can go home at the end of the day and tell themselves the story that they are exactly where they should be. And when that story becomes too far-fetched to believe? Well, I guess then it’s time to do something new.
If you’ve made it this far, I thank you for reading this rather long-winded summation of my experience as a student in school and in life so far. Hopefully you took something away from this. I would love to hear your thoughts, and I encourage you to critique mine. These are the things I’m telling myself right now, and while they work for me they may not work for you. So if none of this makes sense, then please disregard it and continue on your own path — I’m sure it’s equally rich and exciting.
I still have no clue what I’m going to ‘do with my life’. I’ve got some ideas, and if there’s one thing I’m not going to do it’s sit still. For now, though, the only thing I can predict with certainty is what I’ll be doing for the next two weeks: watching Spanish rom-coms in hopes of picking up some useful lines, and trying to figure out how the hell a bike works.
For those who are interested, I’ll be using this Medium page to post updates from our upcoming cycling trip from Santiago to Ushuaia. Thanks for reading!
Nick
