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You know, addiction isn't the problem - it's the solution- When all you care about is here, this is a good
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“Addicted to traveling” or for that matter “Addicted to all-non working activities” shouldn’t be a new reason for self-hatred or a diagnosis, rather a pursuit like the arts and entertainment, that permit self-exploration and satisfy your psycho-social needs. You see, in general, if a pastime is not classy, those who love it are labeled with the Dr Phil-Drew-Oprah Psycho Babble rhetoric of “addict.” Opera and Symphony aficionados, on the other hand are “passionate” and "driven".
Loading the cultural dice in favor of “reality” over fantasy, we get the sense of adventure beaten out of us when we ask ourselves the most irritating of the question words, “Why?” Why do I have to live in the New York suburbs,where the weather sucks and the people are rude, and there is nothing to do? Then we just tune in turn on the TV, and drop out, watching one of the 1000 channels in a shared hallucination called the superstition of materialism, and fall asleep.
Then you get "The Call" and if you wake up and answer it, and you begin the Hero's Journey that Joseph Cambell talks about in The Power Of Myth, with Bill Moyers, that PBS video series that's a must for all seekers, and you follow your bliss-in most cases your bliss follows you.
I started to travel, as a pastime, on a shoe-string budget, labeled as a drifter, a bum, held in contempt by the uninformed, and over educated who find themselves sinking into the everydayness of their lives. And I didn’t care. I just did it anyway. The Calvinists say work is prayer, so is permanent traveling.
In the old days, habits of cultural consumption like listening to jazz music all day and night were considered passions, or forever going to the movies or “The Theatre”, allowing us to create new personalities and use them to fulfill unmet psychological needs. Come to think of it, I think I have an internet addiction too! Awesome.
I have even began eating Ham and Eggs--: a days work for a chicken; a life time commitment for the pig. Inspired by my recent visit to the island of Dravuni where I really did "Meet My Meat".
