Never say never

While reading messages on our facebook page and on our livemedia.gr reports, besides witnessing the admiration and wishes for safe travels from most followers, I noticed a phrase that 3-4 different of them wrote…

Vaguely the phrase was: “thank you for doing what I always dreamt for myself and I will never do in my life”. 

Reading something like this it’s easy to feel uplifted and say to yourself: “who am I? How can I make happen something that for many others is impossible? How cool  am I, eh?”

I would really like to thank all these people for the feelings they express about our project and lifestyle but reading such things makes me feel sad. Why?

Truth is I take all this in perspective. I really don’t believe most people can’t do what we do in life or whatever they dream of. To rephrase this, I actually believe that most people can do in life whatever they dream of. That’s why I feel sorry because people BELIEVE they can’t. But this is simply a belief, something like a miniature religion, it doesn’t mean it’s like this. Most people think they were born and raised only to handle the hardships of life and exactly this is what makes me sad. But life is not what everybody thinks about.  

Whoever has expressed himself or herself this way in front of me in the past has been confronted this way: “if you want something too much, you can definitely do it”. It may seem cheap philosophy for most people, a phrase that enters one ear, bypasses the brain without touching its nerves and gets out the other way in milliseconds.

A cheesy, Coelhoesque aphorism like the one with the “all the universe conspiring in helping you to achieve it”, or a similar written by enlightened writers or philosophers.  

I am sorry I am not an accomplished philosopher, neither have the spiritual clarity or the talent in writing, in order to take you by hand and make you leave everything behind to take a trip around the world or anything crazy you have ever dreamt. 

I definitely can wake up from normality an unemployed or underemployed person, somebody who has cancer or has a parent in hospital, an outlaw or a father of a child in drugs, somebody who visits a therapist or needs one for all the problems facing in life, death, health, getting old, being young, loneliness or fear of people. I can’t do anything for somebody who faces the most serious hardship of life can give you. 

Somebody who is facing everyday problems may consider my life approach irrelevant: just a lucky guy who vagabonds around the world. Or frivolous. I can fully understand people who don’t understand my lighthearted philosophy.   

But still I can’t accept somebody declaring “you are doing something I will never do in my life”, since I am not a NASA astronaut. So, I would like to analyse this deeper because I consider it self devaluating and this is what makes me feel sad. For more than one reasons. 

First, have you ever wonder if you might have already made your dream come true? 

Have you wondered if normal actions and ordinary feelings, like falling in love, a healthy relationship, a child, a simple family, a decent job, a warm house or a genuine friend are lesser values than an overland trip around the world? Personally I don’t think so and you all know that.  

Even simple moments of happiness or relaxation, like going for a coffee with your best friend, an “aperitivo” with good mates, a nap, a joke, a swim at the beach summer time or a sunset, aren’t all these dreams coming true? But do we give them the value they deserve, what do you think?

What I want to say is simple: what if most people already live our dreams but we don’t realise it? Or we realise it in delay, like in 2020, thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic and the way it has influenced our lives? But this is another issue – the positive collateral effects of the pandemic…

Second, let’s say all the above are not enough and you really need something different and special in your life. Are you sure what exactly is this? And are you sure you would be really happy, calm or complete as a human being after you achieve it?

I will accept that there is something teasing you inside. Ok, so why don’t you try it? Why don’t you take a risk to see how it is in reality? What are you going to lose? What if it’s boredom that keeps you behind bars or age? Just do what you dream and if you don’t like it, you can easily get back to normality.  

“I can’t do what you do because I have my mother in a nursing home”.

OK, I get it. That’s life.

But there is a meaning in this as well. And let’s say that your mumdies one day and sets you free. Are you really going to leave everything behind and just go? I wish you do, if you mean it. But if you don’t, please find something else to give meaning to your life. But it should be your meaning, not somebody else’s.  

I don’t want to continue for long. Speaking about myself and my family, you don’t need to wonder whether we face the same problems in life like anybody else. We certainly do. We face financial insecurity, precarious health conditions of close people, age problems, fear, bad state of mind, whatever. Be sure we all have the very same problems. The difference is we find a meaning in our lifestyle. The two of us at least and hopefully we can give meaning to the life of our child. 

I would like you to think another question that no follower has ever directed to me – probably for not looking indiscreet. Are we really happy? “Certainly you all look happy” will write the good lady who follows our adventure and more often sends us digital heart animations to express her admiration. But don’t take for granted we are happy because we travel or we live like nomads. This is not enough. 

We are happy – if we really are – because we are healthy, for as long as we are. We are happy because we still feel young. We have a connected family and a fabulous – like all – child. We love each other and we live in a certain harmony, that’s why we are happy, if we are. And we don’t need to travel in the Arctic zone or cross the Sahara desert to experience this._Akis Temperidis