Listening to: Freebird.
Another milestone reached: £1000 raised for Depression Alliance. Big big thank you to the Thwaites for this support at the end of my trip, and throughout the whole experience.
This post is long overdue and there are a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, I've been lazy. I'd like to be able to say that I've been distracted by getting a new job and setting up a new home, but no, I've been playing Gran Turismo 5 and embracing the lifestyle of a bum. When you're doing anything constructive, it's far too easy to put it off when there's no reward for completing it or nobody to punish you when you don't. Secondly, the nature of this post makes it fairly tricky to write something decent without making myself sound like a right dickhead. I'm not sure I've managed it, but still...
After cycling over 3000 miles and traveling a further 7000 miles by Greyhound coach, you've got to be a pretty vacant person not to think about things and reflect on your experiences. Much of this post is to try and get clear in my own head what I've learnt and to try and put it into some kind of context to make it valuable to everyone else. With this in mind, this post is going to be long and painful and not entirely coherent.
Achievement / Accomplishment
Achievement and accomplishment are synonyms, but achievement infers success as a result of greater effort and overcoming hardships and this is very important in relation to the reasons for my trip. If anyone has read the 'About Me' section of this blog, I did a bad job of saying that I'm a nobody. I've gone through life following what I believe to be an almost natural progression. I've gone through the UK education system with little effort until reaching university. Even going through university I've always known that I had the aptitude to get a good degree. Through my short career to date, things have fallen into place and I've done a lot of good and valuable work, but I've hardly been out of my comfort zone. I've accomplished a lot, but I feel as though I've achieved very little.
But is this assessment a valid one? I've met so many people to whom university, being a chemist, the Space industry, and being in a position to leave a job in the Space industry, is completely foreign. To those people (and there's a lot of them) I've achieved so much. If these experiences could be put on some sort of scale, accomplishing even a quarter of what I've done would be a huge achievement.
To not recognise that I've been incredibly fortunate in the opportunities presented to me would be foolish and I'm immensely grateful for those opportunities. Considering the wider world, it is fortune that has got me to where I am today (ignoring the unemployed and living with my parents bit) and not achievement. But there is achievement in recognising the opportunities that exist and seizing them for personal and social gain.
I should acknowledge my fortune, but I must recognise my achievements. I have done some amazing things that have benefited many, and yet, as said above, I don't feel as though I have achieved much. Even compliments about this trip are met with protestations that it was actually fairly easy to cycle 45 miles every day and just takes time to rack up the distance. Celebrating success is recognised as one of, if not the best way in which to stimulate growth and further achievement (think monkeys and bananas), and if you can't recognise and feel good about your own success can you ever realise your potential?
Life / Living
In reference to my reasons for going on the trip, the discussion between life and living is similar to the argument between achievement and accomplishment. I've gone through life taking easy options when the opportunities present themselves. I've gone through the UK education system to get an MChem and then I entered employment to work with two very successful companies. But having been thinking about life, the universe and everything for well over 15 years, this is living and not life.
A distinction has to made between the two because otherwise this is really confusing, and my distinction will probably be the opposite of many other people's. This stems from thinking about humanity in the animal kingdom and questioning what it is that makes humanity consider itself as a higher species than any other. There are a number of things which all living things do that define them as a living thing: MRS GREN (Movement, Respiration, Sensitivity, Growth, Reproduction, Excretion and Nutrition - yeah GCSE biology!!!). All these things are done in order for a species to survive, but theories of evolution and social pressures can also be applied to define actions that are needed in order to survive. In the modern Western world, in order to get food and shelter money is required. To get money, you need a job, and to get a job an education is required. So for the purposes of this discussion, I define living as those actions that lead to survival such as education and employment. Life is those actions that are carried out purely for the self, that have nothing to do with survival and I'd argue that it's the ability to carry out and appreciate these actions that makes humanity a higher species, although there are of course exceptions.
So, introducing some sort of context, I felt as though the massive majority of my actions to date have been living and not life. It's linked heavily to the perceived lack of achievement, but I didn't feel as though there was anything where I'd grasped life in order to call it my own and so going off to conquer the States on bicycle was a big way in which I could. Who else cycles around the States, especially going to State capitals? But really, the truth of the matter can be seen in a film I've mentioned before: Zombieland. Apart from the zombies, a part of the film is about finding pleasure in a small nonsensical thing - eating a Twinkie. It serves no purpose and yet it brings massive pleasure (in the film anyway; I've not had a Twinkie so couldn't comment on the amount of pleasure it actually brings but I'm guessing it isn't that great) and it's a small action. Attached to the Twinkie is the theme of enjoying the little things. A massive gesture isn't needed in order to claim a life to be your own. Rather than the massive gesture, you only need to appreciate and give time to the things that you enjoy, and enjoy for a nonsensical reason or for any other reason. The message is simple - give time to yourself to enjoy whatever it is that you want to do.
Generosity / Greed
America is a model of Western capitalism. Americans may like to believe that the country is founded upon freedom and opportunity, but really it's greed. Companies tailor their practices to a lazy public resulting in the drive-through Starbucks, drive-through cash-machine, and the drive-through off-license or liquor-store. In a quest to the White House, Mitt Romney claimed that it was his job to not care about 47% of Americans. There is a healthcare system propping up an insurance industry, where the primary concern is the wallet rather than care (I met an Aussie guy who'd been run over and dropped off at a hospital and they were asking him how he was going to pay for the treatment before he'd figured out where he was). This system was defended by one person as they didn't want to pay for the poor choices of others.
So, America is a greedy country. But the generosity that's been shown as I've travelled around has been incredible. From people giving directions, sheltering me from storms, giving me lifts, giving discounts just because I've asked, to people giving up their sofas, giving up their time to show me the sights and sounds of their local surroundings, feeding me, plying me with drinks and doing whatever they can to make me feel welcome. And then there's Terri and Mary and families who have done so much more.
But, so many people are awesome. People who just want to be kind and generous whenever they can. And these people are everywhere. For the past 4 years living in Oxfordshire I've been pretty lonely but that needn't have been the case. There are so many people in every area who are easy to get on well with, who share the same interests as you, have the same queries, troubles, ideas and dreams. It's too easy to go about with your head down, keeping yourself to yourself for fear of interfering and inconveniencing, but making that effort to talk to the people around you, be it neighbour or someone who keeps sitting at an adjacent table in the pub, or even offering your help to strangers in need, will enrich your life and the lives of those around you.
Proactive / Passive
This section stems from a philosophy of life of mine: what wants to happen will happen. On one front it's a way for me to deal with things that go wrong - bad things happen all the time whether we want them to or not and it isn't the end of the world (unless it is actually the end of the world), it's a part of life that has to be dealt with. It also helps guide me in certain decisions in that some things happen easily and I'm going to be better at the things that I find easy compared with the things that I struggle with e.g. I could decide that I want to be a poet, but that's only going to be painful for everyone involved so I'm going to stick with the much easier career of chemistry (it helps that I have a degree in chemistry). Negatively though, and I have had arguments about this before, this makes me quite passive - I wait for an opportunity to present itself rather than creating the opportunity.
Another factor in deciding to cycle around the USA was that nothing interesting was happening. I write emails every now and then with the most interesting and hopefully funny events that happen in my life, and they've been a bit lacking. I knew that this was down to my passive nature, so I decided that the time was right to make something happen. I'm a firm believer that anyone can do anything that they chose to do, and I chose to cycle round the States. The thought of doing something different and unknown is a scary one, but that doesn't mean you can't do it successfully.
Conclusions
These big trips, pitching yourself against the elements in an unknown environment, is often described as a life changing experience. Personally, I'm not feeling it. What the trip has done, is to help give me a position in which I can reassess my life and what I want from it. My life isn't any different, but I know a few ways in which I can improve it. The trick now is to remember those improvements and to not to succumb to routine and external pressures.
Summing everything up - have friends around you that you can rely on for the big things and the little things, such as an impromptu couple of beers. Make sure you give the time to appreciate the things that you enjoy e.g. if you enjoy listening to music, stick on an album and do nothing other than listen to that album. Don't be scared to do the things that you want to achieve. Finally, recognise your success and don't be afraid to celebrate it.
You only have this life once; enjoy it.
