I have to admit it took me a good while to get the hang of traveling alone. It sounds strange to me even to say it, since traveling is what changed my life so completely as a young boy traveling the world with my family, and then flying alone to Europe in 2000 with nothing but a backpack and my skateboard. Though I was surrounded by relatives then, my German was less than functional. I was simply good at nodding my head and sharing the same reactions as those talking to me in order to get by. How easy it is for people to assume their reaching you, when they are not, and vice versa. Yet those experiences allowed my mind to expand well beyond those of my peers, as my dirty little secret allowed me to be everywhere, with everyone, and yet in a world of my own, a permanent growth cycle set outside of those around me. I had never been one to follow others in the classical sense, but I joined them in what they were doing, so long as it did not conflict with my values.
Then there were all the times I traveled to Mexico with my father, where nothing but dangerous adventures, and I mean fucking dangerous, awaited me. There, like Germany I was outside their language and cultural framework, and used my abilities of non verbal communication and great desire to connect as a means to enrich the experience. What a stark contrast Mexico was with Europe, and not just that but the Mexico my father knew and loved. It's no wonder my Mother was awestruck by this unbreakable free spirit who roamed the earth his way, and no other. A way of thinking which had been nearly wiped out in Germany by the Government and its culture of obedience and order, not just because of Hitler as you might assume.
The greatest advancement in my growth however came after falling in love for the first time, but that story will not be recounted here. Suffice it to say that it is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all. It was after that terrible loss that I left America, heading for my first experience in Asia in 2007. It was there, studying and teaching in South Korea with other international students who were in the same boat, exploring the world and themselves, that I truly began to expand towards others, inside of simply within my own mind.Still, it was not enough, it would take many more travels and trials of heart, body and soul to bring me anywhere close to where I am now. Perhaps this is how it always is. One never achieves completion, only new levels of awareness. Until finally there is nothing else for you to learn where you are, and you must move on to another stage of the game.
Unlike all those times before where I had family or classmates to generate experiences to follow a set path of some kind, Here in Japan I am totally and uniquely alone, unable to rely on anyone but myself to decide where to go, what to see, and how I should be. It sounds crazy, but this is where the rubber has truly met the road for me, and all that traveling I did before seems like life with training wheels on. Even though to most people, even myself before now, they were times of great strife and discovery.
Before coming to Tokyo this time, all those experiences of travel and exploration seemed so far away from me, as though they either never were, or were so far gone that nothing like it could happen to me again, but now I've realized that nothing I've ever experienced is far away. All I have to do is BE HERE NOW, in love with all that is. With this achieved, even momentarily, all of time melts into the most beautiful present. A gift. THE GIFT. Of life and love, of giving and receiving in kind. Something I have historically been less than gracious about. It's so crazy to think that there are multiple versions of myself running around in time, not only there but even now in peoples memories. Ask anyone how knew me in the before time and they'll tell you something totally different than the next.
"Daniel Maddox? Yeah I knew him, he still alive?"
"Maddox? That kook? I told everyone to stay away from him, you should too..."
"Cali? That cunt? Full O Piss. He was the craziest American, the only one we ever worked with."
"Sunlawd? Oh Yes, I met him on the cliffs of Esalen, he changed my life..."
"Dean? No I don't know him. Ohh you mean D, yeah, there he is on his bike."
But this is how it is. You live and you die, having lived and died many times before the great death at the end of your life. If you've really done right by yourself you'll eventually do so all the time, everyday in fact. Many religious texts affirm this, though twisted in their own way to obscure the truth of it from the reader. Corinthians 1 in the Bible for instance defends the Christians position of facing death everyday by the government for preaching about Christs resurrection. In Buddhism they stress the need to focus on death itself, eliminating the fear of it and becoming one with the idea that it must and will happen.
The true game changer is the death of ones ego, a death which must happen everyday in order for you to truly live in and through the heart. Something which most westerners are only beginning to learn about, and are still light years away from achieving en masse. A sickness the Native peoples of America call Watico. And one which has been exported to every inch of the world via globalism and its advertising arm in Hollywood.
In my hometown there is a Barber shop and the man who runs has a running joke with his guests about the death of ego. "I have no ego." He proclaims. "I've killed it because I'm the best dressed, good looking barber in all the world. That'll be $35 dollars sir..." This is a joke we started together because of a mutual acquaintance of ours who said a few years back that he had no ego whatsoever, while very clearly enamored with himself and the life he'd achieved in business.
So where does this leave us? Where does one without ego go? Why, nowhere of course. And everywhere too. Confused? Which direction could that possibly be? There is only One direction that can, WITHIN.