The Way of the Wanderer - Introduction

The Ramblings of a "Lost Worlds" Explorer

"To live in one land is captivitie, To runne all countries - a wild roguerie!"
- John Donne

As a writer of adventure travel books, I've become accustomed to using unfamiliar and exotic places - "lost worlds" if you will - as a metaphor for self-exploration and the discovery of inner lost worlds. So join me briefly in one of my earlier experiences:

I am on an island. An ocean of sloppy, slow-moving wavelets, shimmering in a heat mist; a fringe of low, bent palms offering welcome shade and a beach of the most beautiful pink sand I've ever seen anywhere in the world - a magnificent slowly-curving strand of talcum-softness stretching into hazy infinities in both directions. Untouched, unbroken, unspoiled by any sign of human intrusion. No buildings, no boats, no people, no nothing. Just this perfect place - this tiny island - this little lost world set in a turquoise ocean under a dome of blue sky. And it's all mine!

I realize here, once again, that the magic of journeys and explorations is not to be found merely in the external adventures and discoveries - wonderful and terrifying though they are - but in the worlds that such experiences lead us to find within ourselves. Those "other spaces" in the spirit, that beckon and tantalize us all, but in which we may spend too little time.

When I allow my eyes to really see, freed from the filters of the mind, I'm amazed at how much I don't see most days. In the mystery and silence of this evening I'm tingling. Time doesn't really exist anymore. My watch is stowed deep in the backpack and my body begins to respond to its own rhythms. Rhythms of which I'm too often unaware. I am learning to expect nothing - to expect no expectations. So what comes? Surprises, of course, all the time.

We have to be alone to touch our inner selves. And if we cannot touch ourselves how can we ever truly touch anyone else?

A question comes: "Who are you going to be today?" And then a thought which I scribble in a sea-stained notepad:

Ah!
to have no rigid goals and plans
except to be
all the am-s, I am.
And to celebrate too
all the you-s
in
you.

That was all a few years back, but I still have the yellowed note today, tacked to the wall above my desk. When I first wrote it I wasn't too sure what it meant, but I kept it anyway and left my lovely, lonely island after days of slow, mind-evolving, beach-wandering and moved on to Australia.

Things then became a little clearer while drowning.

It was my near-death experience #3 (in twenty-five years of adventure travel writing, I have had a total of five, and that is just about right) and the fickle riptides and wave-crests of the Western Australian ocean were whirlpooling me down for the third and final time. I was experiencing a very odd range of emotions, as if a plethora of different people were inside me fighting for attention while I was very preoccupied with the process of drowning. One was a dour doomsayer convinced that death was nigh and flailing about in a panic-stricken state trying to grab a last breath before the final wet darkness; the second was a somewhat indifferent projectionist playing a crazed film collage of mostly forgotten head-clips of random, and often poignant, life events as the currents pulled me down; the third was the good old writer-journalist - I knew him pretty well - thinking what a great tale this would make if only he could keep notes - and stay alive, of course; then a fourth, far less known to me, that in the midst of the chaos and confusion brought enormous, quiet calm with an illuminating certainty that seemed to say, "there's so much more to come, so many things you've never dreamed of.…"

Needless to say, I survived (thanks to the timely action of a true-blue, Baywatch-built, good-on-yer-mate, Aussie) and when the nightmarish strangeness of it all had diminished I was left with one clear realization - that there seemed to be a heck of a lot of people living inside me and it was time I met more of them and let them out into the world for a romp. Suddenly that little scribbled island note-to-myself took on fresh significance.

To be honest, the idea of the "multi-me" was not altogether new. Travel writing has taken me to some pretty odd places around the globe and put me in situations that, looking back, make me wonder incredulously at my naiveté, stupidity, and blatant bombast in the face of seemingly doom-laden situations. As each crazy adventure was surmounted by even crazier escapades, I'd gain fleeting glimpses of other me-s - unfamiliar characters who emerged unexpectedly to perceive something, say something, or perform some act completely out of character, and then vanish again into what I thought was the "real" me. On these occasions the consistent, unified, "centered being" I assumed myself to be just kind of stood there watching in amazement and occasionally amusement. Who, I would wonder, was that? And who, for that matter, am "I"?

Dismissing chronic schizophrenia as something that did not appear to run in the family, I began observing some of these "other me-s" in more detail. At first it was like pursuing the tail end of dreams-you remember the emotive force but the rich shadowy details fade fast. But over time, a few of them became more familiar, even good friends, and I found they had much to say, much to teach that - given a more traditional life - I might well have ignored.

T. S. Eliot was right: "Each venture is a new beginning." To which I would add - and a "new being," a new range of insights and discoveries of the self, or rather, other facets or manifestations of this complex oddity we so curiously call the self. We all find our own unique ways of exploring these inner-selves. We use the familiar stimulants of meditation, mystic meanderings, music, philosophical-theosophical studies, "altered state" devices in whatever combination seems to work best. For some reason I chose travel as my stimulant of choice and catalyst of inner explorations. In my earlier life I was a city planner in England and later in various other parts of the world, and though I say it myself, I was a pretty good "urban designer" - mildly ambitious, with no complaints at all about inflated salaries, generous expense accounts, company cars and all the beguiling enticements of ladder-climbing professional success.

And so it came as much as a surprise to me as to my colleagues when I suddenly gave it all up at the ripe age of thirty. I said I intended to take a three-month sabbatical but apparently I lied. So far it's been a twenty-five year hiatus and - given a reasonable chance of modest mortality - it'll stretch on another twenty-five. Maybe it was that delightful line from Agassiz that started it all: "I cannot afford to waste my time making money," or Joseph Campbell's releasing reminder: "Trust your bliss - walk on!"

As I grew more aware of the "multi-me" concept, I found I was not alone. Joseph Campbell again:

When we travel we meet ourselves in other guises...by exploring ourselves in many forms of humanity we travel lifetimes in the course of an instant.

And Robert Jay Lifton in his intriguing book, The Protean Self:

We are all multiple from the start...we are by nature multiminded...we are fluid and many-sided...evolving a self of many possibilities.

A friend of mine who has experienced a series of death-defying illnesses and other catastrophes recently returned to life outrageously reinvigorated and told me with an idiot grin, "Dying's not the risk - that's the sure thing. The risk is not living."

So - for life's sake - let's live! It's a risk we avoid at our peril, for why would anyone ignore or discard the one truly free gift we have? And travel has nothing to do with it really. Others have "taken the risk" in far less arduous ways of inner-journeying than my haphazard ramblings around the globe. Even I find the constant need for movement and new experiences a little mellowed now. The inner journeys seem to continue quite happily at my desk, by the lake, in the garden, cooking, rambling the rutted back roads a few miles from home, or while performing the most mundane of tasks. My me-s emerge and move more freely now and as I meet and embrace each new persona (nuance, facet - call them what you will), I find inevitably that I naturally embrace far more readily the multihued dimensions of other people I meet or new situations in which I find my-selves.

So let me summarize the key ideas behind this book:

We are, each one of us, shards, fragments, holograms of the Creator and/or (depending on how tolerant you are of single-creator concepts) the Creative Wholeness of the universe.

Each one of us, it thus follows, is extravagantly and exuberantly multi-dimensional, multi-faceted, multi-talented, and multi-selved.

However (and it's a rather significant "however"), for reasons only fear, cynicism, or ignorance can explain, most of us have been intentionally indoctrinated, programmed, and very often effectively convinced that we can and should only use as modest a number of these multi-selves as possible. This, we are told, is because of their insidious tendency to create a permanent state of personal experimentation which can obviously lead to such dire consequences as irrational joy, inconsistency, restlessness, unpredictability, and stimulate excessive urges of a highly erratic - even ecstatic - nature which, in turn, may be disconcerting and unsettling to personal and family lives and society in general - and downright spiritually anarchistic in some instances.

The problem with all this erroneous programming is that, for reasons we often find convenient to ignore, we tend to forget that the single driving force behind human evolution and the only thing that makes our little world tick and evolve is (dare I say that much-misused word) L-O-V-E. Substitute more acceptable terms such as mutual empathy, tolerance, and understanding if you wish - anything that encourages us to listen to and learn from one another and see others in our-selves and vice versa.

Once we recognize the idea - the reality - that we do, each single one of us, "contain multitudes" (Walt Whitman's words), then it follows that we might naturally be meant to mutually celebrate the release of our individual multitudes and, as a species, learn to evolve together more effectively - and enjoyably - through mutual empathy and support. Obviously, the more you see and celebrate the kaleidoscopic richness in your own spirit, the more you're able and willing to celebrate the kaleidoscopic array of other human spirits and, for that matter, our species as a whole.

As I said before, I chose travel as my conduit to these multi-selves. Real travel. Personal travel. Adventure and exploration. Endless. No finales, only preludes. The kind of travel that tingles and reverberates and resonates and sends symphonies of enlightenment and transformation rippling through our souls. The kind of travel that requires some willingness on the part of the traveler to let go, to seek and celebrate uncertainty, vulnerability, the thrills of fresh discoveries, and the riches of inner journeys that recognize that their ultimate destination is ourselves.

And this door is open to you. To each and every one of us. So, there it is. This book is a clarion call to us all to learn to live and travel through life in a true Renaissance Spirit. You'll likely meet an amazing array of characters inside yourself, characters you had no idea existed. And that will merely be the beginning of the greatest adventure of all - the celebration of life - your whole multi-self life - and thus the lives of our whole human miracle.

Now, if chords have been struck in your head, heart, or soul, then read on, and keep traveling and celebrating the ongoing rebirthing of all your-selves. May you enjoy all your journeys.

DAVID YEADON
KYUSHU, JAPAN

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