Since I started hitchhiking in 2009 I have come across many curious people who seem to think I must have "beaucoup dinero." They always ask me how I do it. I must be a trust fund baby, right? Hardly. The answer is both very simple and very difficult. It is simple merely based on the simple way I travel--hitchhiking, couchsurfing, cooking cheap meals or finding the cheapest menu, drinking the cheapest beer (we all have our vices), camping, sleeping in a bus terminal, etc. There are many ways to stretch a dollar if you use your head.
The hard part, however, is breaking free from all we've been told since we were young. This is what this is all about. Before we are born our lives are designed by those around us and not by ourselves. Society, from one's family to teachers in school to countless other institutions, would have it that we all finish high school, go to college, get a job, have a decent car, start paying our student loans, take out a mortgage on a home, have kids, keep working, retire, and then be too old to really enjoy the last few years of our lives (that is if we even get to that point). Of course we would get some two-week vacations thrown in the mix where we might travel out of our respective bubbles and stay in a four-star resort in Punta Cana, Montego Bay, or South Padre Island. You know, one of those trips where the only locals you meet are the ones serving you food and drinks within the resort. Or the tour guide who works with the resort to get clients and who makes you think you are seeing the reality of the place. Or it could be another resort guest from the same country whose life is a mirror of yours because he or she too has conformed to society. Essentially, your vacation consists of no exposure to anything different than what you have in your own stamping grounds.
This conformist trend all around the world has overpowered "seize the day" attitudes and individualism. We are encouraged to be robots and to lose individuality to work for those at the top who would easily replace our labor with cheaper robots at any chance they got, leaving us to fend for ourselves when we gave up every iota of our essences to help them in their quest for economic might. When a person consciously steps out of this conformity they are seen as outcasts; however, they are really breaking metaphorical chains in order to discover themselves on a new level. Financial gain (the element by which most people measure success) becomes a lesser priority for these people. The young guy hitching the side of the road is not a serial ax murderer. The struggling musician on the street is not just a panhandler. The person living a secluded life in the mountains is not a "weirdo." These people are doing the world a favor by trying to understand it through their own distinct ways and not those of others who have bought into some sort of system of conformity. These people realize how irrelevant BMWs and luxury apartments and inherently crooked careers in legalism and corporatism are.
These things I have realized since I've been living life on the road. I've come to know what is truly important in life and what is not. I have been content in this quest to find myself, something that was impossible for me when I worked as a telemarketer and as a night stocker at Wal-Mart. Like most jobs within a corporation those were leading me to spiritual dead ends. I hope that whoever reads this blog and feels uncomfortable with how their life has gone will find the power to finally follow their dream. A person is never too old to start a quest. And if people say it's too dangerous, they probably really don't know from first-hand experience. It's all word of mouth and media brainwashing. Go out and explore for yourself. If something does go wrong for you then at least it happened while you were realizing your dream instead of cutting cookies at the local factory. Once you break free you will fear little.
Warm regards
Eric B.
Gainesville, Florida
17.2.2012
