Motives

Why?

On the Why Travel? - REASONS page I give an explanation of why I see the need to travel, but those are more from a "travel is fun and exciting" perspective, but those reasons in and of themselves were not the "triggers" that made me plan, and then quit my job to go traveling for an extended period of time on a long journey. Those reasons were more profound, and heartfelt.

Sometimes "life throws a curveball" and you hit the ball in a very different direction. My career was on a steady ascent upward with increasing responsibilities and prestige, but everything changed in 2001. Although the roots of one of those life changing events goes back a couple years earlier to 1999.

2001, who remembers it? That was the year a combination of events occurred which forever altered my destiny. The most important were:

1. Death of my mother from colon cancer

2. September 11th, 2001

They affected me in very different ways. My mother was diagnosed with colon cancer in 1999. She went through numerous rounds of chemotherapy, and later, radiation treatment, as the cancer had spread to her bones. After she was diagnosed, I learned as much as I could about cancer, and later death, as it became obvious conventional treatments and unconventional medicine were not working. March 2001 is when the pain became unbearable and she could fight no more.

A Strange Incident and Disappearing Fears

I read various books about death, including some which talked about "celebrating a loved one's death." That is what I planned to do! I wasn't going to be sad I told myself. After all, I had time to prepare, some who are not as lucky, get much less. Regardless, that turned out to be one of the biggest lies that I ever told myself. When I got the call from the hospice (where she had been for the past 3 weeks) that she was about to die, I quickly flew from California back to Washington State. I had visited her at the hospice a week earlier and had also heard her voice on the phone the day prior, which turned out to be the last time. I arrived at the hospice 5 minutes after she physically died, the hospice worker said her spirit was still in the room. I did not know what to make of this comment at that moment in time. [ Though I did realize a short while later that they must know a lot more about death than the average person since they are around people who are dying everyday. ]

Instead of any "celebration," as soon I touched her WARM forehead, I started crying uncontrollably. My theory of "celebration" and "happiness" that she would no longer be in pain vs the reality of emotion. Over the following weeks, I spread her ashes on Mt.Rainier from a helicopter, and built a memorial website. During the latter process, I can't tell you how many tears I cried out as I looked through old photographs to add. It was also strange though, as I realized there was a side to my mother that I never really knew -- my mother as she was before my sister and I were born. While she worked all of her life in the chemistry field, she cut short her career aspirations to focus on her family more. The old photographs also illuminated my mother's life as a teenager. Sometimes, especially in this day & age, we think so hard about the future, that we forget about our past - both individually and collectively.

The strangest incident occurred when I went to cremate my mother though. My father and sister did not join me when I went to be part of this event. For those who have never witnessed a modern cremation, it is a very simple procedure. Upon arrival to the facility I was led into a room where my mother's body lay in a simple wooden casket, which lay on top of a conveyor / set of rollers. A press of a button and she would be moved into a large oven for cremation.

What happened next I can say is one of the strangest things I have ever experienced, even after all of my travels. I didn't understand it until very recently - 12 years later, and only because of the things I have studied about energy / feelings. As I saw my mother laying in the casket, I went to touch her for the last time. I touched her forehead and had the shock of my life, it was COLD, almost ice cold. She had been in the morgue the last few days. On top of that, I immediately felt a change in my entire body.

I didn't think much more about it at that very moment as I still had to press the button. That I did, she went into the large oven and I saw the door close and the flames begin to engulf her body and casket. As I left the room and went into the lobby, I realized many of the fears I had about life and things in general had not so much disappeared, but had rather "gone into a dark corner," unable to affect me. It was at that moment, more or less, that I knew I would be able to do things that I had thought about before but had been afraid to do.

The World Trade Center

Canberra, Australia - that is where we were, my girlfriend and I, when we first heard about the WTC and Pentagon being attacked, about as far away from NYC as possible. When I first saw it on TV, I thought it was some kind of documentary about the earlier NYC WTC bombing in the parking garage, until I realized something didn't look right. An interesting coincidence which I didn't realize the significance of at the time, was that we watched an Australian documenatary on Osama Bin Laden at the hotel we were at the night prior!

Upon return to the USA a couple of weeks later, I would realize that Australian and US media reaction were quite different to the same event.

In any case, I decided I needed to see the destruction for myself. I planned a trip there with a friend and we arrived exactly 2 months later - 11/11. I had another justification for going, it was an excuse to test a new IFE system that was installed on Jetblue.

Most all visitors who were also in NYC to see the ruins at the time were confined to seeing most of the destruction on TV or through ground level street views, but fate had another plan for the both of us. I had an idea to ask a security guard of a building that bordered the WTC site to let us up to a higher floor for a better view - and it worked! Below are some photos from the high level floor which he permitted us to take pictures from, it made an immediate impact on both of us.

9/11 affected me in quite a different way than perhaps many other people -- for I had been thinking about life & death, the purpose of life, and other spiritual related questions for the last 6 months quite intently. Losing the closest person emotionally to you has a way of doing that - at least for me it did, everyone is different I would realize later. I didn't know anyone personally who died in the towers or at the Pentagon.

How it did affect me as time went on was to solidify a thought that I had earlier, to travel the world and see things for myself, rather than through the eyes and words of others and to answer a gnawing question I had - WHY do people decide to fly planes into buildings to kill other people and themselves? WHY? Religion, 72 virgin wives,the hating of America? Where does this hate come from? People don't just wake up one day and decide to do things like this. Hate takes time to build up - what was the source of this hate & anger? None of the answers I read about satisfied me. [ Later, as my journey went deeper into my own mind, I would learn the source of hate, anger, jealousy, and other 'negative' emotions, and learn to neutralize them in myself.]

An Inherent Curiosity About Our Collective Humanity

These events collided with a deep inherent curiosity about the unknown inside me, something which I only recently learned the origin of. I felt a duty to understand our collective humanity better - something which you may see reflected in the types of places I visited.

I realized the need to address other aspects of life outside of my work & personal life, and improve my education about our increasingly interconnected world. Many people think of travel as just "having a good time," of course I had good times, but I was quite serious about finding specific types of places to visit, and I spent a lot of time thinking about things in a larger context.

After my first trip around the world, I thought I was smart. What I really had become was too arrogant, but not in an outward sort of way, more in how I thought about myself in relation to others. After my first RTW trip, I was tired from traveling and learning so many things, and that is when I decided to start writing a fictional book, perhaps partially as an escape from "too much reality."

While writing this book, I began to learn that there remained so many things I did not know, and that rather than being smart, I was quite dumb. And the thing I was most dumb about was - mySELF / ourSELVES. I finished the book, but was not satisifed with it completely, so rather than publishing it, I decided I needed to learn more.

The Adventure Continues - From Outside to Inside and Back Again

This next part would be quite different than the earlier phase for it would require me to understand something much more subtle and nuanced - why we do what we do at the deepest levels of our minds - far beyond the realm of current psychology, as well as exploring new subject areas I had not studied in depth before. I decided a change of scenery was in order and decided to move to a new country to live. This place was Medellin, Colombia, a place I had traveled through earlier and fell in love with. It was a place that could help me see things differently, not just as a tourist for a few days or weeks - but more in depth.

While there, I taught English, became fluent in another language (Spanish), conducted research on health issues, finding inner peace through self-awareness, increasing my emotional IQ, watched hundreds of documentaries, and began to understand our world in a much deeper way. I challenged myself in a way I had not before by living in a country with few expatriates.

Along the way I traveled to more places to keep learning about the unknown and to answer the many mysteries of life that I thought I had the answers to earlier. In some parts of my life I was too outward focused, other parts, too inward, so I sought a better balance.

One question that I had asked earlier in my travels, that until I could answer, I knew I still needed to learn more, was - what drives (wo)men to make 9 megaton nuclear missiles? (Titan Missile Museum) And 50 megaton bombs? (Search Youtube) There's building weapons to kill and protect yourself, and then there are weapons that seem, to me anyway, totally ridiculous.

Do babies / young children have a desire to kill each other? What happens between childhood and adulthood that causes us to become meaner, angrier, not as nice, more competitive and less cooperative, etc... Do babies need business school ethics classes? I knew it had something to do with fear and doubt cycling in our minds, but before I could answer this, I would have to confront all my own fears.

Roots of altruism show in babies' helping hands (NBC)

The Conclusion

My journeys gave me a first person education of the world, and helped me understand myself better and gave me profound answers to many questions, many about who we are and where we come from, what is going on in the world and how different regions of the world interpret things differently.

Some of these questions I had at the beginning of my travels, some I didn't learn to ask until later. As much as I could, I found my answers. I don't share my answers with many people these days unless specifically asked, for each soul / person must find the answer for themselves, by EXPERIENCING it, and that includes deciding what questions to ask themselves in the first place. Thanks for reading.