Something’s telling me not to post this one, but I’m going for it anyway…

As is often the case, I was just about 90% finished with a particular post that I’d been thinking of writing for a few weeks when another idea suddenly popped into my head. And as I generally welcome random changes in plan, I’ve naturally put the original post on hold and am moving forward with this new idea.

I think the initial problem was that the post I had almost finished was somewhat on the serious side, and today, my mood is far from being serious. From the moment I woke up this morning, I’ve been a bit more goofy than normal, evident by the number of times I pretended to do the backstroke while singing my new (but old) favorite song, The Swimming Song, by Loudon Wainwright.

It goes something like this…

“This summer I went swimming, this summer I might’ve drowned, but I held my breathe, kicked my feet and moved my arms around.”

Catchy, I know.

Perhaps this odd behavior is due to spending one hour yesterday evening getting battered around by what were the largest waves I’ve ever seen in this part of Mexico. It was fun stuff of course, but one can only take getting smashed in the side of the face by a brick of water so many times before it starts to have an affect on your brain.

Or perhaps I’m feeling so jolly because it appears that tomorrow I’ll be taking off for a two-day trip to La Isla Holbox, a tiny island about four hours from Playa del Carmen, where I plan to go swimming with the whale-sharks. I don’t even know what that involves really, but I can’t wait to go and find out!

However, truth be told, while the two factors above may have contributed to my increased silliness and joyous mood today, deep down, I know the real reason.

WHAT IS TODAY?

Today, my friends, is armpit shaving day!

Ever since I was convinced to start shaving my underarms about seven years ago, my bi-weekly dates with a Gillette 3-blade razor have been permanently etched onto my mental calendar. In short, these are not dates that I’m willing to miss.

I’ll never forget my first time, which occurred so suddenly while I was working on board a cruise ship in Hawaii. One day, upon returning to the ship after a few hours of hiking around the active Kilauea Volcano, I ran into a fellow crew member on the pier, who was also a good friend of mine. After swapping stories of how we had each spent our free time that day, I happened to mention how much I stunk because of all my sweating. My friend then looked at me with what appeared to be a look of compassion, and asked, “You don’t shave your pits?”

Twenty minutes later I was back in my one-porthole cabin, standing in front of the mirror in my goldfish tank-sized bathroom, shaving away, without any hesitation whatsoever.

Just like that, my sweating problem practically disappeared, and away went my odor problem along with it. Now this might not seem like such a big deal at all, but when you spend a significant amount of your time traveling, sweat and stench play a somewhat important role. Before I started shaving my armpits, the underarms areas of my shirts were always drenched and stained with sweat within a minute of walking outside into almost any climate. Now, it takes hours for that to happen, if it even happens at all.

And while nobody has ever come up and told me directly, I can’t help but assume that the locals I meet, as well as my fellow travelers, prefer to spend time in the company of someone whose presence can not be nasally-detected from two kilometers away.

TO SUM IT ALL UP

I now spend about one minute every two weeks in order to help ensure that I….

• Smell somewhat pleasant. (Shaving doesn’t necessarily reduce underarm odor, and I’m still using deodorant, but I’m quite certain that the shaving has helped. If anyone can vouch for me, I’d appreciate it!)

• Feel cleaner and for longer periods of time.

• Feel more confident no matter where I am.

• Don’t have to replace shirts as often as I used to.

• Can pack less shirts overall.

Clearly, you can now understand what caused me to go a little nutty with excitement today. And honestly, up until a few minutes ago, I never before realized just how excited I get. You would’ve thought I had just booked a flight to some place such as Kazakhstan!

ENJOYING THE RESULTS

As soon as I finished shaving this morning, I walked out onto the balcony of my apartment, raised my arms up high into the sky, glanced to the right, glanced to the left…

Well, I then noticed that I missed a big patch of hair on the left armpit so I had to return to the shower in order to finish the job…but then….

I returned to the balcony and spent a few blissful minutes enjoying the fresh ocean breeze against the bare skin of my underarm, confident that the coming days would be sweat and odor free.

I know that this post offers little more than an unnecessary glimpse into my personal grooming habits, but this is what my wacky mood has produced. Although, I will stop short of apologizing as I’m fairly confident that this can technically be classified as a traveler’s tip!

Have you been to an REI store lately? (For those who might not be familiar with REI, it is a large chain of outdoor recreation/sporting goods stores located throughout the US.)

Well, I went yesterday for the first time in about three years and I must say that I enjoyed myself thoroughly. The store was filled with an endless variety of very cool gadgets and travel accessories, all of which cause travelers, such as myself, to wander around wide-eyed while trying to fend off the temptation to put everything we see into our shopping basket.

Luckily, however, I am now skilled in the art of restraint, so by the time I walked out of the store some 45 minutes after I had arrived, I had spent a total of $0 dollars.

But that’s not to say that I didn’t spend the entire visit seriously contemplating the purchase of an Osprey Flapjack Laptop Pack, a portable shower, collapsible water bottle, self-inflating travel pillow, citronella wilderness soap, floating camera strap and a full towel that folds into the size of a credit card.

There were many moments during my visit when I simply wanted it all (yes, even the backpack waterproofing spray!) and at one point I even convinced myself that spending several hundred dollars was a most necessary investment.

But in the end, and I believe this has something to do with the fact that I’ve now traveled for so long without any of these things, I found myself asking the same question over and over again: Do I really need this?

I’ve always traveled with a small backpack and only a handful of belongings and have never needed anything more than that. So it was natural for me to question whether or not a travel hammock with mosquito net would really make my life any easier.

While I’m certain that some of REI’s products would be neat and fun to use, I just couldn’t bring myself to purchase anything in the end. I’d personally prefer to keep the $100, $200 or $500 that I could easily spend in an REI store and use it to extend my adventures for another month or two.

But that’s just me. And so now I must ask… What am I missing out on? I’m curious as to what REI (or similar) travel products you recommend and your thoughts on how they improve your travel experiences.

As a side note: I don’t want this post to be viewed as a negative review of REI. They are a wonderful organization that is run as a consumer-cooperative and it is always ranked as one of the best companies to work for in the US. If you are going to purchase any travel-related products, a visit to REI would be a must.

The unmistakable sound of a gong suddenly rang out over the compound and the chattering among the fifty of us who had gathered for a ten-day meditation retreat immediately turned to silence. And just like that, there would be no more speaking, no more body language, no more reading, writing, music, television, computers or cell phones. There would be no communication or entertainment allowed at all.

It was time to focus strictly on self-reflection and meditation.

I’m sure many of you have probably heard or read about such meditation retreats before, so I’m not going to write about the details of the actual meditation practice that was taught. Instead, I want to write about the other fifty people that I shared this experience with.

During the ten-day retreat, and even though I was fully dedicated to my meditation practice, it was impossible not to notice the other people around me. Despite the vow of silence we all took, we still lived, ate and meditated in close proximity to each other for a week and a half. As a result, I slowly began to notice everyone’s particular habits and mannerisms and as the days passed, I actually began to understand more about the lives each person led in the outside world.

For example, there was the short, pale-skinned man sleeping on the bunk below me. He was a homeless man who used the free room and board that the meditation center provided as a way to stay off the streets for a while.

Also in our room was a very thin, red-eyed hippie, complete with dreadlocks and ragged clothes, a young guy who spent the first twenty-five years of his life doing nothing but partying and was on drugs throughout the entire meditation retreat.

The man assigned to the meditation spot in front of me in the main meditation hall was a rough, mean rancher from Texas, always wearing tight jeans and cowboy boots, and always ready to bash someone’s head in if they looked at him in the wrong way.

There was also the 18-year old runaway who seemed petrified of the idea that one day he may have to eventually return home to his troubled family.

Even though the women were separated from the men for most of the course, I did notice the wealthy corporate executive who was stressed beyond imagination throughout the retreat because she was unable to call and check in with her office every day. And sitting next to her in the meditation hall was a woman in her early thirties who appeared to be one of the saddest looking people I’d ever come across.

You get the idea. Even through silence, I managed to know and understand these other people so well. And when the gong rang out once again on the final morning of the retreat, and we were allowed to speak with each other once more, I felt as if there was nothing else to learn about my fellow meditators.

HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?

Well, it isn’t possible. After spending several hours chatting with everyone on this last day of the course, I realized that my assumptions about every single person were one-hundred-percent wrong.

The man in the bunk below me turned out not to be homeless, but a well-known Hollywood film director who participated in a meditation retreat every few months in order to decompress himself from the intensity of life in Los Angeles. The hippie was a graduate student of International Relations at Duke University who wanted to work for the United Nations and the 18-year old ‘runaway’ couldn’t wait to return home and share his experiences with his loving parents and siblings.

And the angry Texan? Well, apart from turning out to be one of the kindest human beings I’ve ever met, he was from Ohio, worked as a teacher for students with mental disabilities and spent the weekends working as a landscaper in order to send his daughter to a good school.

As for the women, my assumptions about them were as equally incorrect. The wealthy executive was far from wealthy, and far from being an executive. She lived in a small town in Oregon, scraping by as a waitress while trying to save enough money to take a certification course in massage therapy. And the sad woman was actually quite bubbly and happy as she couldn’t stop talking about her upcoming marriage to her ‘perfect man’ and the exciting plans they had for the future.

THE DANGEROUS PATH OF ASSUMPTIONS

Without having spoken to any of these people and without knowing one piece of information about their lives, I had somehow managed to create stories and identities for all of them. Even further, I managed to convince myself that what my mind had created was nothing but the absolute truth.

I really believed that I had spent ten days ‘getting to know’ these people, but in the end, all I had done was allow myself to judge, stereotype and make assumptions and then to fill in any missing gaps with even more of the same.

After making this discovery, I soon realized that this was not some freak incident. We all do this, all of the time.

We have a tendency to create stories out of thin air about so many people that we see, hear about or meet in our daily lives. In most cases, we fill these tales with half-truths or even worse, complete fiction, that we somehow believe to be fact.

And this, of course, isn’t fair to anyone, including ourselves. If we are making decisions in our lives based upon stereotypes and mere assumptions, we are heading down a dangerous path. Respect for first-hand knowledge will be lost and I hate to think of where that may lead.

While I perfectly understand that it is nearly impossible to gain a first-hand education about everyone and everything that comes into our lives, I still feel that it is a goal we must strive for. I firmly believe that every single time we are able to trade a moment of blind belief or unfair judgment about someone, or even someplace, for a moment of actual knowledge, not only do we benefit, but the entire world benefits as well.

Why is it that whenever I return to the US I instantly stop feeling like a traveler? While my traveler’s mindset certainly does help me view these familiar surroundings in a new light, just as Tom pointed out in the comments of my last post, in the end, something just feels different.

However, this morning, while putting on my shoes moments before stepping outside, I think I finally discovered the root of the issue. And it all has to do with juggling socks.

For some bizarre reason, and I do this religiously while traveling, within minutes of waking up each morning, I pull out three, balled-up pairs of socks from my backpack (if a pair is dirty I’ll use a ball of tissue in its place) and start juggling. I usually walk around the room while juggling, trying a few nifty behind-the-back and under-the-leg tricks before attempting my most daring trick, juggling non-stop as I switch from a standing position to a sitting one and then back to standing again. And then, all of a sudden, after I’ve had my fill of morning clown activity, I put the socks back into my backpack and, with blood flowing and muscles loosened, I get ready to begin my day.

But the strange thing is that I haven’t done this once since arriving back in Florida one week ago. I didn’t make a conscious decision to stop, I just stopped naturally as if my brain won’t let me partake in this travel habit while I’m in my home country. And missing this morning routine is one reason why I don’t feel like a traveler at the moment.

But there’s more than just juggling socks. Actually, the more I thought about this odd situation, the more I realized how many other strange travel habits I not only have, but that have disappeared as soon as I returned to US soil. In fact, the list of these habits is much longer than I would ever have imagined and after re-reading it several times over, I also can’t help but wonder…

Am I really that weird of a traveler? I guess you’ll be the judge.

Here are a few more of my strange travel habits:

• Sleeping under a blanket – Only when traveling do I need to sleep under a blanket, no matter how hot it may be in the room. I simply can’t fall asleep otherwise. Once, I visited the Indian town of Bodhgaya during the hot season, where the temperature hovered around 120 degrees, even at night. And when I asked the manager of the guesthouse for a blanket, he explained that he didn’t have anything more than an extra sheet. I didn’t sleep that night at all and had to buy a thicker, more blanket-like cloth in town the next day and I slept perfectly fine after that.

• Change of voice – Many other travelers I’ve traveled with, and even many of my friends from around the world, seem to be highly amused by the way my voice changes whenever I’m trying to speak a foreign language. Apparently (and by apparently I mean, yes, it does happen but I don’t exactly want to admit it), my normally deep voice turns into some sort of barely-audible, squeaky feminine voice that has been compared to the ‘whispering of a frightened 7-year old girl’. It’s no surprise then that I’ve never exactly fully mastered another language.

• Walking while brushing my teeth – I haven’t done it once since my return to the US a week ago, but I’ve done this every single day I’ve ever spent traveling abroad. After putting toothpaste and a few drops of water onto my toothbrush, I just turn around and go for a walk. While brushing my teeth I’ll walk around the room, around any rooms nearby, back and forth along hallways and even up and down the stairs. And it doesn’t matter if I’m in my own apartment, in a hotel room or using a shared bathroom at a hostel. If I stop walking, I stop brushing my teeth and so I must keep my feet moving at all times. (This habit did prove unbelievably useful one time in Thailand.)

• Tapping the beat to a song – Whenever I get nervous while traveling, I start to tap my thighs to the beat of an imaginary tune, all in an attempt to portray some sort of confidence and comfort that I may be lacking at the time. But usually I’m too nervous to actually think of a real tune and so I just randomly hit away at my legs. And what is perhaps even stranger is that I always use my wrists, not my fingers or palm, to beat out the rhythm, which in the end, makes me look absolutely ridiculous and not at all like a confident and casual person. Maybe one day I’ll share a video of this!

• Om Mani Padme Hum – On my first ever trip to India back in 2001, I bought a silver pendant that I’ve now worn around my neck ever since, taking it off only a handful of times over the past 9 years. On this pendant is a Tibetan prayer – Om Mani Padme Hum – which is a prayer for the compassion and happiness of all living beings. The strange part is that every time I cross a border into a new country, I find myself grabbing a hold of the pendant in my right hand and repeating the phrase Om Mani Padme Hum three times to myself. I have no idea how or when this ritual actually started but I now do it automatically every time I enter a different country.

• Packing & Re-packing – When it’s time for me to move on from one city, town or village to another city, town or village, I always pack my backpack the night before so that I will be ready to go the following day. However, almost every time, upon waking up in the morning in order to catch my bus, train, boat or plane, I’ll empty out my backpack and then immediately re-pack everything once again. And then, I’ll repeat the same process all over again one more time. I’m not too sure why I do this either, but I’ve yet to allow myself to just leave my stuff scattered around, unpacked, until the morning. I just feel the need to pack my bag at night, despite knowing that I’ll do it again, twice, before I actually leave.

So, am I a strange traveler?

Hopefully not, or at least not too strange anyway. After all, I do suspect that you may have some odd travel habits yourself and I’d love to hear about them! Perhaps I’m not the only one out there who, only when traveling, spits water at the wall during my showers while pretending that each spit is a new type of missile that at the last minute veers away from its target and as a result, never kills anyone.

On second thought, I probably am the only one who does that.

Quick Note: Before you want to kill me for the title of the post and the photo, please read it first. There’s no violence involved, I promise!

And even though this goal was virtually created out of thin air, I clung to it during the rest of my youth. I would often reflect upon the life-changing experiences that I assumed were waiting for me in this country that I knew absolutely nothing about. As time passed, my desire to visit Vietnam never waned and in fact, it grew stronger every year.

Well, imagine my uncontrollable joy on the day that I finally made it. I had walked across the dusty border from Cambodia and suddenly found myself standing in the border settlement of Moc Bai, with all of Vietnam stretched out before me, just waiting to reveal its magic. I stood there for a few moments in complete triumph, ready to explore the country I had thought about for so long.

And then, from that very first moment when I entered Vietnam, everything was an…absolute disaster.

Here’s what happened:

• After being stranded at the border for seven hours waiting for a bus to take me into Saigon, I was stricken with a stomach bug as soon as I arrived into the city.

• On my first night, I was kicked out of my hotel room at 11pm due to a booking error made by the hotel.

• The next day, a rickshaw drove over my right foot as I crossed an intersection and an American expat I met in a small cafe turned violent and chased me down the street while screaming at me in Vietnamese.

• Two days later, my bus to the Mekong Delta had to return to Saigon after a barge captain rammed his barge into the only bridge leading to the Delta, causing such extensive damage that the bridge closed for three weeks.

• In the mountain town of Dalat, I lost control of my rented scooter and accidentally drove it into a baguette stand.

• A few days later, after arriving in the town of Hoi An in order to celebrate the Vietnamese New Year with some friends, I discovered that there had been a mis-communication and my friends were ten hours away in the town of Nha Trang.

Needless to say, that first week in Vietnam was not fun at all. And as I walked alone along the narrow lanes of Hoi An, completely frustrated and trying to make sense of the non-stop disappointments, I suddenly recalled the words of my wacky 9th grade English teacher.

“Don’t be afraid to kill your babies.”

KILL MY BABIES?

Before you get all up in arms, my teacher’s words do not, of course, refer to our human babies! Those kind of babies need to be hugged, burped, tickled, fed, rocked, bathed and have their diapers changed relatively often, so I’ve heard.

The babies that we should consider killing every now and then are much, much different.

These types of babies are ideas, places, beliefs, goals, dreams and even relationships with other people. Basically, they are anything we feel a strong attachment to and which we consider to be of great importance, but at the same time, and despite our noblest and most dedicated efforts, simply do not produce the results or bring us the benefits that we expected them to bring to our lives. Often times, they cause us endless frustration and disappointment.

For example, maybe we have a brilliant idea for a blog post that we spend days and days working on because we just KNOW that it is the most brilliant idea we’ve ever come up with, but we can’t find the right words to express ourselves no matter how many different approaches we take. Or perhaps we work our asses off trying to start that business we’ve always dreamed about but after a year, we discover that, despite our efforts, we’ve made no real progress at all. Or as was the case with me and Vietnam, sometimes a long sought after dream appears to come true, only to turn into a nightmare.

I’ve learned that no matter how much we try to nurture and care for our brilliant ideas, our relationships and our life-changing goals, sometimes they just keep on spitting and vomiting all over us without ever providing us with one moment of joy.

PULL OUT THE KNIFE

So, thanks to my English teacher, whenever I’m faced with such a situation these days, I just pull out a knife and start killing. Don’t worry, I’m probably one of the least violent people you’ll ever meet. (I’m actually in the middle of writing a post about why we shouldn’t kill the insects we encounter while traveling, so that should ease your mind!) Far from being violent, my form of killing, and the form that my English teacher was referring to, simply involves stopping whatever it is that isn’t working, boldly walking away and then starting to do something else in its place with a fresh state of mind.

I’m aware that some people might equate this kind of attitude with ‘giving up’, but I’m a firm believer that certain things just aren’t going to turn out the way we had hoped, and the longer we hold on to these struggling ideas and dreams, the more unhappiness and frustration they’re going to bring into our lives.

Back in Vietnam, I simply killed my long-held dream to explore every corner of that country and I detached myself from the hope of finding some hidden secret there that would alter the course of my life. Deep inside, I knew that it wasn’t going to happen, no matter how hard I tried to make it work. Sure, I could have stayed in Vietnam for the five weeks I had planned to stay and kept on plodding along in the hopes that the situation would improve…

But I just jumped on a bus and went to Laos instead.

THE RESULT OF SUCH ACTION?

As soon as I crossed the border at Lao Bao and entered the beautiful Lao People’s Democratic Republic, my struggles vanished, my frustration evaporated and I felt like a new man with a clean slate before me. My time in Laos then proved to be more than memorable as I spent five weeks exploring the country and loving every single place I visited, every person I met and every adventure I had. In the end, this is where I found my life-changing experience.

I do suspect that anyone who has traveled extensively has been through a similar situation at some point, opting to abandon a most disappointing adventure in a place one had dreamed about visiting for so long. And even if you haven’t, I’m sure that you’ve experienced this is another aspect of your life, when you’ve been left to wonder how something you were once so sure would be your greatest idea, your greatest work or your most certain path to happiness, seemed to be so impossible to achieve.

At least now, any time we find ourselves suffocated by the amount of Gerber being regurgitated onto our heads from what we consider to be one of our most precious babies, we know exactly what to do.

I always wanted to write a post while on an airplane. Unfortunately, my last laptop had an ‘extended battery life’ of exactly 17 minutes which made anything more than turning it on without plugging it in a definite impossibility.

But now, with my new laptop in hand, I’m prepared.

Actually, I am starting to write this while sitting in the airport in Fort Lauderdale. My flight back to Mexico, which leaves in about an hour, is only 1 hour and 15 minutes in duration and when I factor in the chunks of time at the beginning and end of the flight when I must keep my computer turned off, I don’t have much time to complete a post. So I need a head start…

This post is not going to be about flying though, nor about luggage or duty-free shopping. It’s not about the security screenings either (although I did just manage to go through security with a large bottle of contact lens solution, a pair of scissors and a flip-knife).

Anyway, this post is about…change.

And when I say change, I am of course referring to the difficulties we all face when we smile our widest smiles, speak in our kindest of voices and ask someone if they could provide change for a large monetary note. Yes, trying to get change in currencies around the world is indeed a matter that needs to be addressed.

Six days ago, when I was checking in for my flight to Florida at the Cancun airport, I spent an extra twenty minutes at the Jet Blue check-in counter simply because not a soul around was able to break a 200 peso (approximately $15 USD) note so that I could pay the departure tax upon leaving Mexico. Nobody could help me out. Jet Blue personnel didn’t have any change, nor did the dozens of staff at the airline counters of Mexicana, Aeromexico or American Airlines. Nor did the cashiers at two different souvenir kiosks in the terminal or the luggage porters outside who receive their wages in the form of small tips.

Finally, it was a woman dropping off her husband at the airport who was able to break the bill and save the day.

MAKING CHANGE AROUND THE WORLD

Of course, this was not the first time I’ve been in this situation. I can no longer count the number of instances when I’ve been in desperate need of change, yet nobody within 327 miles was able to provide it. It happens everywhere and I’ve come to expect it almost as much as one expects a stomach illness after eating street food in Mumbai.

Speaking of India, whenever I’m traveling over there I often think I’ll need to take a 19-hour train ride to the other side of the country just to break a 50 rupee note ($1) so that I can buy a mango. It’s as if providing change to a foreigner is an illegal activity that carries a twenty-year jail sentence for any local caught in the act.

I’ll never forget an afternoon I spent in Laos running around the town of Pakse trying to break a 20,000 kip note (approximately $2.50 USD) so that I could pay the bus fare to Champasak. The bus driver didn’t have any change and neither did any of the passengers. I even tried two banks in town, both of which claimed not to have any change as well. Needless to say, the bus left as scheduled and I wasn’t on it.

And while there is no doubt that such change issues seem to occur more frequently in the third-world, developed countries are by no means immune. Off the top of my head, I can remember having extreme change difficulties while trying to pay for a coffee in Norway, a room at a hostel in Brisbane and for a bicycle rental in Bariloche, Argentina – all of which led to a lengthy search mission for change that covered an area the size of Belize.

Even during this past week in the US when I went to purchase a pack of gum, the cashier didn’t have enough change to break my $10 bill. I unsuccessfully asked four other customers, one police officer, a biker on a Harley-Davidson and even a dog (I was willing to try anything) before finding someone who could break my note.

I’m sure you’ve experienced this plenty of times yourself, wandering around in circles asking and asking for help, with your cries being met with apologetic yet firm refusals. Eventually, you get your change, but not before throwing your hands in the air in complete bafflement while thinking…

IS IT REALLY POSSIBLE THAT NOBODY HAS ANY CHANGE?

I tend to suspect that most people do, in fact, have the ability to change a note, but simply choose not to do it instead. Perhaps it is fear or greed that leads them to shake their heads when asked, as they try to convince us that they walk around with empty pockets all day. ‘Maybe I’ll need it later, maybe I won’t be able to get change myself, maybe the money I receive in return will be counterfeit’. I don’t know what goes through every potential change-maker’s head, but whatever it is, it keeps them from saying ‘sure, no problem’ and opening their wallets in order to make the exchange.

When I think about it, this type of situation is similar to another form of change – the non-currency-related type. It is a fact that we can all make positive changes in our own lives, but when our life situations seem to demand that we take a few steps in a new direction, we often back away, shake our heads, shrug our shoulders and employ a long list of excuses. ‘I’m too busy, I’m too old, I’m too tired, this is just how life works, it won’t make a difference.’

Why do we do this when the ability to make change is right there in our pockets?

Life is constantly asking us to hand over a few measly, unorganized coins in exchange for a beautifully-designed, impressive bill, complete with a President’s or even Charles Darwin’s face on the front! But when we have the chance to accept this favorable exchange, we look life straight in the eyes and lie, saying ‘Sorry, I don’t have any change to give’.

Is it me or is purchasing a flight ticket one of the most exhilarating feelings in the world?

The process usually unfolds as follows. First, sitting in front of my computer, I hover the arrow over that “Submit Payment” button for three excruciatingly painful minutes as I review my flight details a few more times and quickly scan my brain for any indication of why I should not go through with the booking.

And then, usually without warning, my brain sends an electric pulse straight to my index finger, causing it to push down ever so slightly, but with enough pressure to force that arrow to charge my credit card account. With eyes wide open I sit and stare at the screen, being sure not to touch anything for fear of disturbing the payment process, and I patiently wait, hoping that the unstable internet connection doesn’t fail me or that the thunderstorm outside doesn’t suddenly cause a blackout.

I wait for that most inspirational of all numbers – the confirmation number – to miraculously appear on the screen.

The sight of that confirmation number alone allows me to finally exhale and for the excitement that had been building up within to be unleashed. Typically the joy is too overwhelming at first and I remain seated in shock for a few more minutes, trying to comprehend the adventure ahead that I have just committed myself to.

Sure, sometimes that initial excitement comes to an abrupt and most unfortunate end upon realizing that I just booked a flight to Milwaukee in the dead of winter in order to attend a birthday party for my distant cousin’s Poodle named Lazy, or as was my situation a couple of months ago, booked a flight for the completely wrong date. That was not such a joyful experience and ended up requiring several long phone calls and an uncomfortable amount of pleading to get my mistake sorted out.

But usually, the thought of boarding an airplane, of sitting in that metal flying machine and within a relatively short period of time being transported to another region of the world, of being on the move and about to throw myself into a land of unique challenges and experiences is about as phenomenal of a notion as it gets…at least for me.

And this is exactly why the completion of a flight booking tends to send me into a fit of uncontrollable chest-pounding and whoo-whoo-ing and often a few minutes of celebratory break-dancing on the kitchen floor (I am particularly prone to doing the snake). I might even try hula-hooping in public next time thanks to Ash at The Middle Finger Project!

Purchasing a flight ticket is the solidification of travel plans, often marking the end to a long road of saving money, revised itineraries, delays, uncertainty and pure confusion. And with that closure often comes a fresh beginning, another chapter of life, a new set of unknown opportunities and an endless string of intriguing strangers to meet.

As you might have guessed, I booked a flight ticket earlier today.  While I’m not heading to the most interesting of destinations this time, I will be flying to Florida in a couple of weeks to visit my family. But even booking this short trip got me thinking about how affected I truly am by the thought of travel, and how that excitement begins as soon as the flight is confirmed.

For anyone that that flies even once a year, I recommend checking out John Bardos’ detailed post Frequent Flyer Miles Hacking over at JetSetCitizen.com for some tips that every traveler will benefit from.

Anyone planning to be in southern Florida around March 18th – 22nd?

A white, rusty, beat-up, early 1980s pickup truck came to a screeching halt only seconds after driving right by me. And as I stood on the side of the road, my heart began to beat a little faster as the truck shifted into reverse and backed up at a frighteningly fast speed. Again, the tires screeched, this time as the truck stopped right in front of me.

The driver, a large man with a torn and dirtied t-shirt, and a serious, angry-looking face, remained in his seat while the passenger, an even larger man with a ripped t-shirt and lack of any expression resembling a smile, jumped out of the truck and approached me. Without a word he pointed at himself, continuously tapping his own chest as if trying to emphasize that I somehow had done him some harm. He then stretched both of his arms towards me, and without giving me any other option, grabbed the spare tire and wrench out of my hands.

He then jacked up the car, replaced my blown-out tire with the spare, handed me back the equipment, refused to take some money that I tried to offer him and then climbed into the truck and sped off again with his friend.

That’s the kind of neighborhood I live in.

AT FIRST GLANCE

At first glance, this area of Playa del Carmen may seem somewhat rough, a reasonable initial judgment given the abundance of shoddily built one-room concrete homes, half-torn-down fences attempting to protect properties littered with car parts, broken toys and trash and the semi-frequent presence of graffiti-covered walls.

If you were to visit me (and the invitation is always open!), I’m certain that after a few moments, you would repeat the same words that all of my friends and family who have either visited or seen the photos, have spoken: “Oh…hmmm…so this is where you live? This is what you came to Mexico to experience?”

But I wish you could be sitting here next to me right now.

I’m sitting on my small balcony. To my left is a view of the turquoise Caribbean Sea (the view in the photo above), straight in front of me is a large patch of dry jungle and to my right extends my neighborhood. Two elderly men are sitting on the curb a few buildings down, playing guitar and singing for nobody but themselves. A group of children are playing soccer in the street, smiling Mexican families are walking by on their way to the beach and a flock of parrots are providing some beautiful back up music to the two old men. The sun is shining and the air is warm.

As I sit here looking around at my surroundings, I’m happy to be living in such a place.

MAKING QUICK JUDGMENTS IS MORE COMMON THAN I THOUGHT

Truthfully, had this been several years ago, I would have immediately decided against moving to this neighborhood after seeing it for the first time. Driving past one cinder block hut with chickens running around the front yard would have been enough to make me want to live elsewhere.

While I was thinking about all of this today, it occurred to me how many times over the years I’ve allowed myself to formulate an instantly negative opinion about a certain place or even group of people without ever really getting to know them.

I’m sure, in fact I know, there must be hundreds of times. The more I think about it, the more I realize how many times, even per day, that I make rash judgments based upon insufficient knowledge.

For example, only a few hours ago I went shopping for food and decided to go to a supermarket that I’d never been to before. As soon as I walked in and noticed the concrete floors, unorganized layout of the aisles and piles of empty cardboard boxes scattered along the walls, I said to myself, “This place is terrible. Coming here was a mistake.”

But not wanting to head across town to a different supermarket, I stayed and did my shopping. Thirty minutes later, as I handed over my money to the cashier, I was thrilled as I could not believe how much food I had purchased for approximately 30% less the cost than had I gone to my regular supermarket. Now, I’ll definitely be coming back to this new place every week.

Of course, making a judgment about a supermarket is a relatively innocent and harmless situation. But I fear that I’ve made those same quick judgments about towns, cities, countries and even groups of people, more regularly than I’d probably care to admit. And when this happens, I am denying myself an opportunity to learn, because the desire to learn is greatly diminished as soon as we’ve made up our minds about something.

I’m also doing a great injustice to those who fall under my unwarranted generalizations – the people whose country I’ve suddenly labeled “boring”, “dangerous”, “not worth a visit” or “full of lazy people” after having passed through the airport or spending two nights there en route to someplace else.

(This is the reason for my general dislike of certain guidebooks, mostly those that seem to do a mighty fine job at helping people form opinions about places before ever even visiting them. But that’s an entirely different post!)

I’m not trying to say that all initial judgments and generalizations are negative and all future realizations are positive. But to me, the important aspect is not what those perspectives actually are, but how we arrive at them.

Did we see one police car zooming down the street with lights flashing and declare a place dangerous?

Did we hear a story from an Australian guy that taught primary school in Dubai about the rude and hateful parents he had to deal with and then declare the United Arab Emirates to be a terrible place? (Yes, it was during my earlier years of travel!)

Or did we interact with the people ourselves and get to know the culture and lifestyle as much as we possibly could?

Here in my current neighborhood, I would have maintained my initial apprehension had I not ventured out and interacted with the woman who owns the laundromat (as a customer, keep it clean!), the family who runs the local breakfast eatery or the staff at the 24-hour shop who take care of my late-night chocolate urges.

And now, I’ve been happily living here for two months and have nothing but positive things to say about this neighborhood, its people, the businesses that operate here and even the transvestite prostitute that hangs out a few blocks away (it’s not what you think – s/he just gives me a friendly ‘hola’ and doesn’t hassle me anymore when I walk past).

Initial judgments should be treated as thoughts to be built upon and crafted, not as absolute truths. When it comes to traveling, who are we, as outsiders, as travelers passing through, to categorize, classify or stereotype a place and its inhabitants?

I know that I’m going to start making an even more dedicated effort, not to avoid having initial reactions, this is a part of being human, but to avoid mistaking those reactions for ultimate conclusions.

(This post is part of a unique project organized by Jonny over at www.thelifething.com. Through his efforts, a new inspirational eBook titled “SUCCESS” has just been released that consists of 30 bloggers’ personal definitions of the term ‘success’ and how to achieve it. The eBook is completely free to anyone interested and can be downloaded here: The Success eBook. In addition, most of the bloggers featured in the book have written a post this week about their thoughts on success in the hopes of creating a massive wave of inspiration around this topic! So, here’s my post…)

I immediately knew that the difficulties and challenges would be plentiful, the nagging from family and friends to settle down unbearable and the road ahead overflowing with unknown answers to many of life’s important questions. But I still felt successful nonetheless.

At the time of this realization, I didn’t own a home. I didn’t even rent one and I had no bed to call my own. I didn’t have a business or a job and I naturally had no income. In fact, all I had was a pair of shorts, three t-shirts, one pair of sandals, a camera and just over $1000 to my name. Yet none of that mattered, because to me, success has nothing to do with any of those things.

Whether you have one backpack holding all of your possessions or you divide your time between three mansions, a castle and two yachts, the measurement of your success should be separate from the monetary value or sheer number of your material possessions. Of course, we hear this all the time, but I find it to be so undebatably true that an extra mention certainly can’t hurt. As I wrote in the Success eBook I mentioned above, “Success is living in active pursuit of what you truly want in life, not what others want for you.”

Can you think of anything more fulfilling than living the life of your dreams? Is there any greater success story than that? That’s why we have dreams. They represent our loftiest goals and ideals for what we want to see happen during our time on this planet. Some people claim that without unachievable dreams, we’ll lose our motivation and drive to work hard in life, but I disagree.

1. Consider our dreams to be unachievable and give up before even attempting to reach them.

OR

2. Live out our dreams, then create new ones, and live out those as well (and repeating this cycle over and over again).

So if achieving the greatest success imaginable is possible, why would we spend our lives in pursuit of anything else?

I once envisioned living a life involving constant world travel. And I somehow achieved it. Now I dream of using these years of travel to promote the benefits of global citizenship. And I plan on reaching that goal as well.

If I can achieve my definition of success, then anyone can do the same. I’m just a normal guy, having grown up in a suburb of Boston, receiving a normal education and enduring the same pressures as everyone to conform to the traditional path of life. But here I am now, living one block from a white-sand beach in Mexico, learning Spanish, interacting with new people, connecting with other global citizens through this website, earning income through unique business ventures and regretting not one minute of this adventure.

Now again, this was my dream, my version of ultimate success. It’s obviously not everybody’s goal. But whatever is your true goal, it can be attained.

One of the most common reactions I hear from other people who have decided to pursue their goals and end up finding personal success is: “That was much easier than I thought.” Of course, they undoubtedly put in a lot of blood, sweat and tears and it might have taken several years or more to achieve what they wanted. But seriously, isn’t a little blood and sweat or two years of struggle worth the result of living a life you once thought would remain a fantasy inside your head forever?

If you’re still not convinced, have a quick look at what all 30 inspirational lifestyle designers, nomads, and global citizens have to say: The Success eBook. It’s well worth the read and again, it’s absolutely free to anyone interested!

And any efforts to share this post and the link to the eBook will be greatly appreciated as our goal is to get this eBook into the hands of 50,000 people worldwide. Perhaps this book will provide that final push of motivation that will lead someone to a more fulfilling life!