India & Southeast Asia

Here is an excerpt from a recent journal entry in which I was feeling particularly profound for no reason other than the realization that it was my birthday and I had been travelling for six weeks (I do not plan for these posts to become regular):

July 22, 2015. 9:30 p.m. Udaipur
The travel life has become a blur only chronicled by illness and Ash's return to the U.S.. My happiness is almost permanent when healthy, yet my patience when sick is dangerously low. India has offered such a full breadth of cultural flavors that correctly recalling the details of Kerala has become a challenge requiring visual assistance. The North has distinguished itself in terms of its more challenging terrain and people, with arid land and facetious attitudes rising to relevance for the first time. I find myself absorbing these traits as my bluntness with tuk-tuk drivers and disagreeable salespeople has increased fivefold. When being swindled becomes a possibility, I quickly become a vehement adversary, for better or worse; probably unjustly so. In any case, my warmth towards others has become a joyous reflex that only increases with time. Maybe it is new, maybe it has always existed and is finally manifesting itself. It seems that as one travels alone, the embellishing aspects surrounding their personality fade away in the absence of the social surroundings that cultivated them in the first place. The skeleton of that personality is closer to what I wanted to be for the last few years, I believe. What I do know is I like the person I am today more than the person I brought into my 22nd year. My goal to be happier every 12 months than the previous 12 hit an existential speed bump at 22. A new outlook and assurance of personality all but secures a successful improvement in my 23rd year. This is a source of great excitement.

I have no intentions to deplore over the past, but I do have an emotional investment in today and, when I'm responsible, in tomorrow. Dwelling on the shortcomings of one's early adulthood is only valuable insofar as it is used as a bitter reminder to do better. Be better. Be more thoughtful, less selfish, more attentive. The world around us, existing as a random series of cause and effect, will continue to hurl things into our path, good and bad. One cannot opt out, but one can actively learn through addressing this flux with contemplative action. There is no secret or formula for a "successful" life, there is only the deliberate reflection on our own lives, their connections to the greater world, and an ability to put ourselves and others in context. Doing so unlocks a patience and subsequent contentment that the hypercritical and excessively proud cannot access without demeaning others. Altruistic emotional achievement is an exercise in tolerance, in patience, in understanding, and in self-awareness. Not one in self-affirmation through South-Park-Cartman-esque mental gymnastics to convince oneself that the rest of the world is wrong.Read more