make progress much faster. The different surroundings act as a counterpoint and mirror for your own prejudices, making weaknesses that much easier to fix. I rarely travel somewhere without deciding first how I’ll obsess on a specific skill. Here are a few examples:
Connemara, Ireland: Gaelic Irish, Irish flute, and hurling, the fastest field sport in the world (imagine a mix of lacrosse and rugby played with axe handles)
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Brazilian Portuguese and Brazilian jujitsu
Berlin, Germany: German and locking (a form of upright break-dancing)
I tend to focus on language acquisition and one kinesthetic skill, sometimes finding the latter after landing overseas. The most successful serial vagabonds tend to blend the mental and the physical. Notice that I often transport a skill I practice domestically—martial arts—to other countries where they are also practiced. Instant social life and camaraderie. It need not be a competitive sport—it could be hiking, chess, or almost anything that keeps your nose out of a textbook and you out of your apartment. Sports just happen to be excellent for avoiding foreign-language stage fright and developing lasting friendships while still sounding like Tarzan.
Language learning deserves special mention. It is, bar none, the best thing you can do to hone clear thinking.
Quite aside from the fact that it is impossible to understand a culture without understanding its language, acquiring a new language makes you aware of your own language: your own thoughts. The benefits of becoming fluent in a foreign tongue are as underestimated as the difficulty is overestimated. Thousands of theoretical linguists will disagree, but I
Gain a language and you gain a second lens through which to question and understand the world. Cursing at people when you go home is fun, too.
Don’t miss the chance to double your life experience.
Service for the Right Reasons: To Save the Whales, or Kill Them and Feed the Children?
Morality is simply the attitude we adopt toward people we personally dislike.
—OSCAR WILDE
One would expect me to mention service in this chapter, and here it is. Like all before it, the twist is a bit different. Service to me is simple: doing something that improves life besides your own. This is not the same as philanthropy. Philanthropy is the altruistic concern for the well-being of mankind—human life. Human life has long been focused on the exclusion of the environment and the rest of the food chain, hence our current race to imminent extinction. Serves us right. The world does not exist solely for the betterment and multiplication of mankind.
Before I start chaining myself to trees and saving the dart frogs, though, I should take my own advice: Do not become a cause snob.
How can you help starving children in Africa when there are starving children in Los Angeles? How can you save the whales when homeless people are freezing to death? How does doing volunteer research on coral destruction help those people who need help now?
Children, please. Everything out there needs help, so don’t get baited into “my cause can beat up your cause” arguments with no right answer. There are no qualitative or quantitative comparisons that make sense. The truth is this: Those thousands of lives you save could contribute to a famine that kills millions, or that one bush in Bolivia that you protect could hold the cure for cancer. The downstream effects are unknown. Do your best and hope for the best. If you’re improving the world—however you define that—consider your job well done.
Service isn’t limited to saving lives or the environment either. It can also improve life. If you are a musician and put a smile on the faces of thousands or millions, I view that as service. If you are a mentor and change the life of one child for the better, the world has been improved. Improving the quality of life in the world is in no fashion inferior to adding more lives.
Service is an attitude.
Find the cause or vehicle that interests you most and make no apologies.
Q&A: QUESTIONS AND ACTIONS
Adults are always asking kids what they want to be when they grow up because they are looking for ideas.
—PAULA POUNDSTONE
The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive.
—THICH NHAT HANH
But I can’t just travel, learn languages, or fight for one cause for the rest of my life! Of course you can’t. That’s not my suggestion at all. These are just good “life hubs”—starting points that lead to opportunities and experiences that otherwise wouldn’t be found.
There is no right answer to the question “What should I do with my life?” Forget “should” altogether. The next step—and that’s all it is—is pursuing something, it matters little what, that seems fun or rewarding. Don’t be in a rush to jump into a full-time long-term commitment. Take time to find something that calls to you, not just the first acceptable form of surrogate work. That calling will, in turn, lead you to something else.
Here is a good sequence for getting started that dozens of NR have used with success.
1. Revisit ground zero: Do nothing.
Before we can escape the goblins of the mind, we need to face them. Principal among them is speed addiction. It is hard to recalibrate your internal clock without taking a break from constant overstimulation. Travel and the impulse to see a million things can exacerbate this.
Slowing down doesn’t mean accomplishing less; it means cutting out counterproductive distractions and the
Learn to turn down the static of the mind so you can appreciate more before doing more:
The Art of Living Foundation (Course II)—International—(www.artofliving.org)
Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California (http://www.spiritrock.org)
Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in Massachusetts (http://www.kripalu.org)
Sky Lake Lodge in New York (http://www.sky-lake.org)
2. Make an anonymous donation to the service organization of your choice.
This helps to get the juices flowing and disassociate feeling good about service with getting credit for it. It feels even better when it’s pure. Here are some good sites to get started:
Charity Navigator (www.charitynavigator.org)
This independent service ranks more than 5,000 charities using criteria you select. Create a personalized page of favorites and compare them side by side, all free of charge.
