The Ego Trip
“I used to go to Nepal with my parents as a kid, back when it was still a nice place to go. Not so much now.”
My dentist roots around my mouth. He’s the new doctor, Boston educated, just had a baby, operating (pun intended) with an air of youthful gravitas. His speech is laissez faire to the point of clarity–he doesn’t think what I’m doing is all that special.
I balk. Up to this moment, everyone’s reactions to my travel plans had been nothing short of glowing. The last woman I spoke to had said she loved Nepal so much that it was the place she adopted her daughter from. I don’t know how to further the interaction and I’m taking it unnecessarily personally. I just nod politely and open my mouth wider.
Later I tried to make sense of why his comment bothered me so much. I wondered if it was an egoistic reaction stemming from a need for my travel destination to mean something about my career or character. I had recently been questioning my own motives as the fear of leaving my very comfortable life behind encroached. My rationale? The desire to push myself out of my comfort zone; to get educational field experience in a way I couldn’t in the classroom; to utilize my college years to their maximum potential; to check another country off my list, to pad the “Global Experience” section of my resume…?
I recently read an article designating millenials (the generation of which I am the very youngest possible member, 22) the “burnout generation,” characterized by an ineptness in the completion of small tasks, owing to intensity of expectations of personal and career performance in a world of constant distractions. As much as I would like to think myself so, I am not immune to the effects of this ritualistically placed pressure on the American student body. I’m likely one of the most affected by this as readily available advanced technology has been present for the entirety of my education.
But shouldn’t it be that travel is one of the ways we escape the high expectations placed on us in our day to day life–getting off the grid, away from the toiling toward a success-stimulated-enlightenment that will never come? Travel shouldn’t be another trigger for self-actualization anxiety, should it?
The last time I went on a trip as extensive on the one I’m about to take, I had just decided to transfer colleges. I found myself feeling particularly lost and with a semester’s worth of free time. It was a perfect time to go, and there is no question in my mind that my intentions were pure. I wanted to see the world because…I did.
But so much has changed since then. The stakes are higher now that I’m further along in college, close to graduation, secure in my studies, and especially given that travel is no longer for fleeing a failed year, hurt feelings, or wasted time, but now rather a measured decision made from weighing the benefits of travel against the pain of removing myself from the community I’ve worked so hard to build.
I fear that as a result, my reasons for traveling have surpassed primarily intrinsic and trickled into the egomaniacally goal-oriented motivation of my generational flock. In many ways for my fellow students and I, travel seems to have become another way to prove ourselves. The use of travel as a way to “find” oneself implies a means to leverage curated life experience as social capital. And presumably, this too entails finding interest in a career path, the fact being that confidence in one’s place in the world is a highly employable characteristic.
Even more meta, in traveling to places of physical challenge and spiritual loftiness such as Nepal we can be seen as striving to evince qualities that actually absolve us of this overachieving sickness–“look how adventurous and mindful I am!”–but this too might also just another way of proving an alternatively transcendent confidence and character.
So it follows that my dentist’s comments about Nepal as a country in decline would challenge the “cool” factor that I had come to expect telling others of my travels to have. The pragmatic reasoning I had arrived at to assuage my own feelings of apprehension at uprooting myself was suddenly weighed in the balance. Someone had spied through the scrim and viewed a landscape unlike what might normally be seen through the typical Western glamor goggles. Consider me humbled.
“What a bummer!” You must be thinking by now. Today’s headline: Young woman singlehandedly ruins own travel experience prior to embarking. Truthfully, I’ve probably been thinking about this way too hard.
But thank GOD (thank Buddha?) my angst wrought over-analysis was tempered further while reading up on Tibetan Buddhism.
“All doubts are to be abandoned, and assiduousness in practice to be cherished. Renouncing sleep, torpor and lassitude, I must always make energetic efforts. With mindfulness, attentiveness and care, thoroughly guarding the senses, During three periods, day and night, I must examine the stream of the mind. I am to proclaim my own faults, not look to those of others. I must conceal my excellences, while proclaiming those of others… Dwelling in wilderness retreats, may I put myself into hiding, Like the corpse of a dead beast, and dwell there free from desire… When among many, may I watch my speech. When alone, may I watch my mind!
from Atiśa, The Bodhisattva’s Jeweled Necklace”
Tibetan Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction by Matthew T. Kapstein
“Hang on,” I nearly said aloud in the coffee shop. This all sounded suspiciously like someone writing about ways to make the most of travel.
Readers who have spent extended time engaging in exploration of the world (especially of the more rugged persuasion, though even cushier sleeping arrangements and fancier locales can still prove to be trying as hell) will recognize the parallels. In travel, one must renounce control, gird their energy reserves, spend much time reckoning sights previously unseen, come to terms with ethnocentrism and question the validity of their own culture, spend a little too much time with others, and a little too much time alone. All this tends to result in a great sense of satisfaction, and, dare I say, inner peace?
Tibetan Buddhism teaches the cultivation of a flexible, compassionate and disciplined state of mind not only for the alleviation of personal suffering, but for the betterment of all human kind, and expounds on the idea that positive change starts within us. Cultivating compassion through expanding one’s worldview and flexibility from uncertainty, inevitably leading to the much needed off-gassing of ego are the aspects of travel which I appreciate most. Travel is a uniquely effective meditation on developing those aspects of ourself that fortify us against what may have been directly responsible for turning 15 years of kids into the “burnout generation.”
So, travel…perhaps not as self-involved as I had started to fear? The first of many lessons from a place I haven’t been…yet!
“In today’s world, the attempt to develop a flexible mode of thinking isn’t simply a self-indulgent exercise for idle intellectuals…Without cultivating a pliant mind, our outlook becomes brittle and our relationship to the world becomes characterized by fear. But by adopting a flexible, malleable approach to life, we can maintain composure even in the most restless and turbulent conditions.”
The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler, M.D.
