Traveling, Self Esteem, Social Status, and Happiness

[Inhibition]

I was curious how traveling effects how you feel living in a capitalist society? I've been on disability for many years, for both mental illness and a very painful neurological condition. I became quite isolated and was too ill to travel for some time, but my symptoms improved enough I was able to do small scale bicycle touring when weather allows. I traveled 700 miles or so last summer, climbed 20,000 feet of different mountains, cycling and hiking, spent time in national forests, and it was probably the best experience of my life. I had to stop as the kind of nerve pain I have is very sensitive to cold.

Something I've noticed is when I'm climbing a mountain, or camping out somewhere, I don't really feel the same hierarchical state, that I feel even in my home. It feels more freeing like the current social order has less of a presence in my mind. As someone with anti capitalist beliefs, I don't think less of myself because I do not have a career or regular employment, but within my society I'm a very low status person and I can't help but feel that. I also never really had friends or romantic relationships and had many bad experiences with people.

Somehow I just feel overall better when traveling. I don't know if I've ever felt happiness or peace on the level that I did. As someone with depression, I didn't know I was even capable of feeling that content. I've been struggling a lot more with depression again since hunkering down at home for winter.

Does it change your perspective so dramatically? Is that part of why you do it? It's so profound it can make me feel like I might want to live, rather than spending my life trying not to want to die.

 

[Jone]

I also noticed that traveling is kind of an Antidote for depression. As I'm getting older I feel my friend group shrinking, and yes especially when it comes to dating I feel very much 'not normal' and worry other people will not just judge me, but its hard to find someone who's life style fits with mine. Finding a traveling partner is a rare and valuable thing. Idk just spend a lot of time alone I guess.

 

[bote]

I can relate to a lot of what you are saying. I feel at my best having to adapt to my environment, which is essentially what travelling involves. I get a lot of joy out of simply taking care of myself in evolving situations. Our society doesn't encourage that or value it except as it fits into consumer experience, or the good old "finding yourself" trope, that presumably ends when you figure out where you fit in. I love lending myself to projects, I respect and get along well with people, but I very rarely feel like I fit in, because I don't really want to. I don't believe in the kind of capitalist productivity and growth that are at the heart of most social arrangements, and the terminally idealistic doesn't do it for me either.
Climbing a hill to check out the view, biking somewhere beautiful, figuring out where and how to stay, or how and when to go: these things make sense to me. They appeal to me, and that is the kind of sense that makes me happy.

 

[Matt Derrick]

I also noticed that traveling is kind of an Antidote for depression. As I'm getting older I feel my friend group shrinking, and yes especially when it comes to dating I feel very much 'not normal' and worry other people will not just judge me, but its hard to find someone who's life style fits with mine. Finding a traveling partner is a rare and valuable thing. Idk just spend a lot of time alone I guess.

Yeah, traveling was my cure for depression most of my life. I definitely empathize with the dating situation as well. I did most of my last few years of traveling alone.

I've been wondering if there's something I can do with this site to help facilitate connecting folks like ourselves not just during travels, but also after we retire from that world.

 

[pcflvly]

After traveling, and I mean surrendering to the road, I was forever changed. I was kind of messed up when I started. I left to clear my head and got immediate results. With sanity, and after getting much older, I don't even know how to fit in anymore. I tried. I worked and saved and rented but simple bullshit had become intolerable to me. So what if my boss at the nonprofit was embezzling? Normies just look the other way and I couldn't do that anymore. Luckily, I built up a lot of social capital in my travels and always have a place to go because I can't do the full time traveling anymore. I've gotten older. I just want to live outside the system where I can productively contribute to my immediate community.

I've been in the desert for two months now, almost completely in solitude. Practicing no money life again. Went to town once this year so far and that was quite enough for the month. I also went to a private hot spring where there was real life. That's all. Otherwise... I wish we could have what they have without having to go through a rat maze to get it. Warm space with electricity and water. Social opportunities. In three years I can get a small social security check... Until then, I'm looking for a community with an opening for a grandpa type...

 

[Inhibition]

Yeah, traveling was my cure for depression most of my life. I definitely empathize with the dating situation as well. I did most of my last few years of traveling alone.

I've been wondering if there's something I can do with this site to help facilitate connecting folks like ourselves not just during travels, but also after we retire from that world.

That seems like a good idea. I acquired my disabilities quite young and am now middle aged. Expectations for having found success and security within capitalism increase dramatically with age. There's more leeway for young people to still be finding themselves or still be putting their lives together. There's more of an understanding that young people will rebel, but we're supposed to have gotten it out of our systems, settled down, and found our place.

For those who spent most of their lives traveling, even if you stop, you aren't starting on the same page as someone who was prioritizing other things. Maybe a section for adapting to post travel life? For relationships, finances, or how much if at all to to re-assimilate? Those are all huge questions.

Meanwhile, I never got to 'get it out of my system.' It's hard to know if I could ever feel settled down. I'm a lot more opposed to the way my society is structured than I was in my youth. I often wonder how I would have developed without disabilities.

 

[sevedemanos]

Relatable.

Variety is the spice of life. So when you come from the lowest wrungs of income or of privilege the means we will find most affordable to that end are more often than not fairly unconventional. When you're out of tobacco you take up herbs.. out of rolling paper, news paper. Normies might fly to France on vacation, and I might go see feather river.

Ymmv

 

[pcflvly]

Expectations for having found success and security within capitalism increase dramatically with age. There's more leeway for young people to still be finding themselves or still be putting their lives together. There's more of an understanding that young people will rebel, but we're supposed to have gotten it out of our systems, settled down, and found our place.

As somebody who rejected capitalism literally 40 years ago, I don't define myself within the terms of that system nor do I measure success and security in their terms.

Sitting here without even enough money for a beer, I do feel successful. I've been back to the forests I planted and have feedback and testimonials from my more recent endeavors too. I changed the world (a teeny tiny bit) but I can't even pay for my electricity and that's only $25 a month. Despite that, I am successful.

I still have to think about security though and that's a pretty serious issue considering the state of housing in this country. I have age related issues too, eyesight and dental among other things. Although, I'm grateful to be mostly healthy and in a sound mind, I can't travel and live outside year round anymore. I also have a few things. Not much, but more than I can carry and I'll never go back to motor vehicles again. Yet I find that I do have security. Because of what I've done and how I've acted, I will always have a place. I'm actually about to choose between offers.

So, even outside of capitalism there is social capital and I would hope there were clues in my experiences for a community wide model, an on the ground, help out us older kids measure of success and security.

 

[InsolentMolotov]

I've been housing indoors for 6 years now, with a girlfriend, a refrigerator, and other comforts that signal I've decided to assimilate with the social "norms". We even have nightstands by the bed. I've undertaken countless projects and got an education in various metaphysical studies during my time indoors. But no matter what I fill my time with or which relationships I nurture and contribute towards the development of, I've always got a bag packed and feel like I'm going to walk away from everything Ive built up.

I've always been the running kind; with leaving always on my mind. And at 40 years old, I've grown too conscious of the temporary nature of every material "thing" sought after and gained. And now the acquisition thereof feels unimportant, leaving me unequipped for deeply putting roots down on much of anything with a genuine interest and always questioning what my biggest reason for reaching this indoor phase of my life was.

I love all of you tramps and I love the road. Lacking a close connection with these things leaves an emptiness Im unable to fill by any other means during this phase of my life.. steadily climbing closer to the need for mental therapy without them.

I'm located in SC. Upstate. Spartanburg. About 30 mins from the Appalachian mountains. I welcome anyone that would be down to hit the AT with me for a thru hike this year. My gear's already packed!

 

[bote]

@InsolentMolotov if you like kids and get along well with your partner, would you consider having a kid? I feel like that's its own way of walking away from everything, if you put your whole heart into it, and it sounds like you're in a good place for that. Just a thought.

 

[laughingman]

Always nice to see more anti-capitalists out here. Keep the truth. I feel there is a sort of drawing down or winnowing of priority and thought processes when traveling that I could see helping people deal with trauma, anxiety, and depression. We are given the opportunity to focus only on the most fundamental facts and realities of our world. This allows us to put off or ignore the larger cultural narrative of winners and losers or fitting into a group or quietly accepting our enslavement in-order to not out ourselves as unusual. Its always strikes me. Maybe a two weeks into a longer trip. That society is not an un-alloyed good. It has its upsides and downsides. People who don't quite fit have always found themselves more comfortable on the edges of the structure then wholly within its center. As we make those edges smaller and shine a light into even the darkest little corners, travel becomes an acceptable excuse to the same destination. travel can truly be an escape. Not just from the places and conditions you live in. But also from the person that you are forced to be in those places and under those conditions.