The Voice of Time wrote:
Well travelling is not a day at the spa ^^ It has its hard sides. But I definitely has long-term fun value. But depends what kind of person you are of course, if you're able to enjoy sleeping on park benches, eating food out of trash cans and stuff like that x) To this day I see a menu in fact when I look at trash cans, it's hard to get the habit out xD
Yes, I guess it depends on each person: I'm not altogether convinced I'd like to have that experience. For me, doing that kind of thing is nothing more than
purposely occupying your time searching for means of survival so as not to give a fig about your goal in life. How do you find meaning in spending your days trying to get by? I think I'd end up commiting suicide if that happened to me - I don't think I would be able to handle it.
Things can go wrong everywhere, so just as long as you don't go to Baghdad or somewhere extremely dangerous, you should be fine.
True, true. But it's somewhat more comforting to know that in the case of a misfortune I can count on financial and family support in my country. If I'm in the other half of the world, how would my relatives/friends even know when something serious happened to me?
I was only stolen from once, and that was while I was sound asleep in the middle of the city public park... and a time some punk adventurer thought he was gonna "salvage" what was in fact my properties, not knowing it was mine... although in his defence it did look like trash what I owned x)
Well, you were lucky it only happened once! I guess it also depends on the country. You're less likely to be robbed in industrialised countries than in less-developed ones.
Unless you're walking in the middle of a desert or some extremely undeveloped country, your degree of "lostness" should be relatively small. In France and Spain where I travelled there are maps everywhere and people are generally nice to talk with.
Yeah, it's difficult not to find help in populated urban countries. What I referred to was mainly in the case of finding yourself in a more vast region. What if you are left stranded in the middle of the countryside where there's no one to help you? That is a bleak and scary outcome in my opinion. But maybe I'm just a pussy (lol).
Part of the job x) However, you can get back a new home when you need it, later. I stayed with my aunt in the capital the first few days, then in cooperation with the social services I got myself a bedsit shared with lots of other young people in Trondheim, where I currently live, although at a different location.
Great that your aunt could help you out. Unfortunately, I have no relations in the rest of the world
A bedsit sounds cool, though it is probably more expensive than a hostel, right? Oh, so you are not done travelling then? How cool.
Well I may have had an aunt which paid for my flight ticket back home (wasn't that expensive). But besides that, no financial back-up, and wasn't that bad without money. France and Spain got universal free health-care, and as part of Norway I have a European health-insurance card for free which means I can just visit a doctor if I need to. Never needed to use it though. Never even threw up from bad food x) But maybe I have a superior immune system?
It must have been a great benefit to be insured, just in case something bad happens! I can't believe you never had to visit a doctor. After eating from the trash, I would've definitely had come down with something.
Well you don't eat "dinners" as such. You eat what food you can get, although when you do have money you buy what looks nice of course x) And I never used buses. I hitch-hiked with people, and sometimes walked, which worked occasionally in France because it's such a tightly populated country. To be honest, I made more money from people just giving me money at random, than from people giving me money when I begged. In Norway I also collected bottles and returned them in the store for money, which, if I really wanted to, could give me 20 dollars a day perhaps or more in populated areas. But I was lazy and didn't effort much. Spent most of my days philosophizing and developing philosophy x)
And you never had a bad experience hitch-hiking? It does sound a bit scary to get into a stranger's car. But again, maybe that's just a common misconception I have. Still, there must obviously be big differences between hitch-hiking in Europe and hitch-hiking in Asia, Africa or Latin America.
That job in Norway would've sound good to me! You probably would've got enough to pay the stay at a hostel or bedsit if you had worked the whole week.
Oh, and how did you do to philosophize with an empty stomach and/or sleep deprivation (assuming that was the case)? I can't concentrate on what I'm reading if I haven't eaten/slept well recently, even less when I'm reading philosophy.
The Voice of Time wrote:
Not deep friends, but you meet people who will treat you like "friends" yes, "actual friends" yes, although I seldom encountered them during my journeys, but I did a couple few times. Other were just very friendly, but not "friend", mostly because they pitied me. But there's no point in developing deep relationships when you travel, you won't likely see them again anyways. You just share a moment of your life together. But that's good as well, I think we need both deep friends and more friendly friends, and just random people as well, it all adds diversity and spice to life. Takes it from dull to rich.
Well, it's not that I dislike meeting new people. I agree with you they can add diversity to life. But not when they're only up for chitchatting. And moreover, in my opinion, it's impossible to really befriend someone in a day/night. At most you can get acquainted with him/her, that's all.
Maybe I'm weird, but I hate making superficial social relationships. Especially because 99% of the time people do not come off to me as really sincere in those cases. Obviously I can't make a broad generalization because people are different, and it may be that some believe (just like I do) in possibly making fruitful relations.
Why not? Why should he remember you? If you remember him it's enough I'd say, unless you trying to stick unto him like some insect, which is stupid. You can enjoy yourself without being with friends all the time, not everyone needs to know your specifics all the time, or do you have a social aversion for strangers and people who don't know you? I find strangers liberating sometimes to talk with. They teach me new ways of communicating, new knowledge (although a lot of it is bogus of course), and it teaches me about the world at large, different points of view, and ways of thinking... but maybe that's just my interests.
It's not like I want to stick to people all the time and constantly demand their attention. But I just like to know they value my company, you know? People generally try to avoid being alone, even if that means having to chat up with people they wouldn't like to be with. Countless of times I made "small" friends who seemed happy to be with me, but then when they had better things to do I was totally ignored. I don't think of myself as a possessive person, on the contrary, I understand everyone may have their own troubles and concerns. However, I don't like it when they don't even make an effort to ever want to see you. Heck, if they don't like my company then why did they pay me attention in the first place? I'd rather they'd be cross and cold from the start than being ovewhelmingly nice concealing their dislike for me.
That depends upon your engagement with them. If you engage in smalltalk, you get smalltalk in return. If you engage in big talk, you get big talk in return. If you engage in fun talk, you get fun talk in return... people usually adapt towards how you treat them.
I'm not sure if I agree with your claim. Sure, in a philosophy forum you may get big talk, but that's not always the case in real life. Most people I know can barely talk about "deeper" and "controversial" topics. Hell, the "biggest" talk I've come upon is about politics, and that with people basically repeating the exact same opinions they heard on the media.
It's not like I want to get onto big talk rightaway, you know? Obviously, you can't come up to someone and say "Hey, so what is your idea of God?". But I dislike making smalltalk with people I won't ever see again, because I honestly could not care less about their job, their family or their opinion on the last Hangover movie. I wouldn't mind making big talk even with people I hardly know, because at least that way I get to meet an interesting part about them. I think that time is not wasted when you discuss something worth discussing. But that almost never happens anyway.
Seems to me again you are expecting the wrong thing... don't look for clones. Just look for something that fits. My buddy is nothing like me... He doesn't give a damn about the world, he's generally simple-minded, his world is mostly a joke to him (not in a bad sense, but in a sense he jokes a lot), his political leanings are the direct opposite of mine (I'm a staunch progressive, democratic socialist, he's more of a progressive capitalism kind of dude, though that's not really descriptive since he has never talked politics with me, it's more of an assumption), and so forth. We don't even play the same games, except some games which we play just to play together, and not really for solo... but we get along great. We party together, we joke together a lot, we share an enthusiasm for games in general, and we've built up over time a bit of shared dyadic (between us only) culture. So by most means we are nothing alike, but just those things that makes it possible to enjoy each others company, those things work... and it works great, we got a great relationship. So... moral of story: it's not clones that will give you good friendships, but whatever fits.
Extremely unlikely, I know him from school and we have a long history together x) Because we live in different town/city, we now mostly communicate on the internet, but we do visit occasionally. It's not that expensive to travel.
But I'm not looking for a clone! I just want someone willing to care about me, willing to give me his/her time even when their tired of me. At least that's how I try to be with people. I never leave a message unanswered. If they invite me for something even though I don't want to do it, I do it anyway without making up an excuse. And if I genuinely can't, I try to arrange something soon to make up for it. Am I asking for too much?
I didn't know you knew your Internet friend in the real life. That makes it totally different!
Well I don't understand how scepticism should be involved unless you are thinking about spirituality, which I'm not. I can't stand spiritual garbage, but the kind of meditation I'm talking about has nothing to do with spirituality, and everything to do with controlling your own body as well as learning to relax. In a way, listening to calm instrumental music while in a bathtub is a kind of meditation, if you know how to enjoy it properly. As I indicated in a thread I created in the political forum: appetite is an art that needs to be developed. And in this sense we are talking about an appetite for relaxations and music, a development of ones consumption.
Oh, ok, so you meant
that kind of meditation. I thought you referred to a spiritual meditation.
It's difficult to see how it could help me find meaning. I'm sure it's a pleasing activity, though I imagine it would bore me after some repetitions.
No idea what that means. What I'm talking about is nothing like not taking control of your life, it's about a proper management where you don't give unobtainable desires the priority, but instead prioritize what you have, so as to stabilize yourself and have a bit of happiness.
I meant that being happy with what you have is not something bad, but whether that can give you meaning is something different to me. I'm a goal-centered person, if not I wouldn't care about where my life is going. I understand you talked about
unobtainable desires, but how can you know what can be unobtainable and what cannot?