I was sitting on a concrete bench outside the ferry terminal waiting for the eight o’clock sailing when a beat-up old campervan pulled up and a young guy with long hair and an elvish appearance stepped out, wearing a pair of massive, visor-like pink sunglasses. His energy radiated and as our eyes met I knew this was someone who would have an impact on me. With people like that it feels like they’ve been sent to meet you.
Sure enough, sat in the afternoon sunshine, we got talking. Maxim, that was his name, was from Ukraine and was en route to the warmer climes of Spain in his van. A web developer on the road, he’d lived in Montenegro the last 8 years growing fruit and veg on a smallholding, and now he was off to Spain to go hiking and work on farms, not that he had much of a plan. Maxim was a raw food vegan, meaning he didn’t cook any food, and to be fair, looked very youthful for 43. Either it was all the raw veg, or he was just full of bullshit.
I was pretty nervous about border security because I hadn’t checked in since that time in Sarandë, Albania. You’re meant to check in and out of every country, but I had to flee across the border to Montenegro so couldn’t check out of Albania, and couldn’t be bothered in Montenegro and Croatia. It was a faff and it seemed like they didn’t really care. But that’s just because I’m white and have a British passport – that’s the ridiculous truth.
The first official quickly scanned my passport and I was through, but the problems started when I went to get my kayak and had to return through security. Maxim told me to walk with confidence, but maybe I overdid it because I was accosted and the guard didn’t believe I’d already been checked. She leafed through my passport looking for the stamp, but for some reason the other official hadn’t stamped it, which didn’t exactly help me prove my integrity. Now she didn’t trust me at all, and I worried she’d start asking questions about where I’d been, but luckily I was sent on my way.
As I approached the ferry, pulling my boat on its faithful trolley, a ferry worker gleefully told me ‘You need a ticket for that’. ‘Well,’ I replied, ‘in that case, I’ll put it on my friends’ campervan in the queue’. Sharing a penchant for rebelling against authority, Maxim and I giggled like naughty schoolboys as we offloaded my kit from inside the kayak into his van. ‘Load the kayak once you’re on the ferry’ the worker said, but once on the ferry, ironically the car loading crew directed me to put my boat underneath a lorry, and I smiled triumphantly at the guy who’d insisted I pay as he walked over and tutted disapprovingly when he saw my boat wasn’t even on Maxim’s roof.
Maxim and I sat in the reclining seats and talked whilst he strummed his guitar. “Tell me the most insightful thing you can tell me” I asked him. “Everything is limitless” he replied. My question was flawed and I realised this afterwards, but nonetheless, it remains a good question to begin a conversation with, not least because it’s interesting to consider why it is flawed.
Ask someone to tell you the happiest, most intelligent, or kindest thing they can, and their answer will most likely disappoint you. Why? I’m puzzled by this but I think it’s because, by definition, nothing in the real world can live up to the concept of the superlative in our minds. Happiness, intelligence, kindness, insight and so on- they’re all just concepts that exist in our minds, and we use them to determine how happy, intelligent, kind, insightful etc something is by making a comparison between the imperfect form that exists in reality on planet earth, and the superlative – the greatest, highest quality version of that concept that exists in our minds. How happy is Dougal? We decide this by comparing him to the ultimate version of happiness that we have an image of in our minds. But the thing is, everything in reality is imperfect compared to these perfect, ideal forms that exist in our minds, so no amount of insight will ever live up to the ideal form of insight, and we’ll always be disappointed when we try to attain them. As I write this, it’s making me think of Plato and his theory of forms, the first time his theory has seemed relevant to my daily life, not some crazy, abstract idea.
Another theory is that contrary to Maxim’s answer, ironically these things really are limited. The reason I’m disappointed by the level of insight we have is that there is only so much to know or there is only so much we can know.
A third idea is one I wrote in a previous blog: ‘Previously I’d thought I could talk or think myself in to a deeper awareness of the world. But I came to realise that if you want to go deep, you have to transcend. And the problem is that language is limited in communicating ideas that transcend the material world – we can’t tap in to each others brains to understand what a word represents. I suppose this is a personal journey, and it’s hard to share.’
We talked about this and Maxim claimed that he couldn’t share deeper insights with me because our levels of consciousness were too far apart. This made sense to me because, for example, someone who has a good understanding of quantum physics can’t have a conversation about the subject with someone who doesn’t understand it. He said I could put my boat on his roof and go with him to Spain, and that after living a certain lifestyle, which involved raw veganism, I’d reach a deeper level of understanding about life, we’d be able to talk about it freely. He also claimed this lifestyle would cure me of type 1 diabetes. “No, it’s not like that”, I explained, “the mind can only do so much – someone who lost a limb couldn’t think it back in to existence, could they?”. “Yes they could, you’d just never hear about it because as part of having that level of consciousness, they’d never share that they’d regrown their limb”.
This may sound like nonsense and perhaps it’s more likely that Maxim latched on to this radical belief to help him through life. But even so, you can’t rule anything out until you can prove it isn’t true and until I’d tried this, I couldn’t disregard it, so I was rather curious. “Let the floor decide” was Maxim’s motto and perhaps the floor had sent Maxim to me, and I should go to Spain, explore my consciousness – this was my chance. I even looked at ferries and saw routes from Barcelona to Tangier and Algiers. Maybe I should just keep paddling in North Africa, maybe this was the floor telling me to just keep traveling? A fresh wave of excitement swept over me but then I paused.
I questioned why I had plans, a direction, and a drive to move forwards, and then it came to me quite clearly. We have free will to make choices, and we are faced with choices every day, so we have to decide what is the best decision to make. How to do this? Well, we choose a value to live by, we choose what is important/meaningful to us. Actually, do we choose a value to live by, or is it already chosen and we have to discover it? It seems like the latter because although some people are more conscious of the value they live by than others, even those most aware of the value they live by didn’t consciously choose it, rather for some reason they just felt it was important, they believed in it.
Some people chase financial success without even being aware they’ve put this value at the center of their lives. Others campaign for human rights and are very aware they think this value is important. But both money and human rights are human constructs that only exist to the person that believes in them, and both people have come to believe these values to be important in the same way – conditioning from the world they live in – so who is anybody to say one is better than the other, even if the human rights activist is more aware of the value they are living by.
It’s important to have a balance with other values, but life is a path with many forks, and having one dominant value will make navigation easier.
When I ask the question “Is there more to life than this?” what I’m really asking is “Is there another value that would make me more fulfilled in life?”. We can never know which value is best to live by, but we can change the values we live by and compare how each leaves us feeling. This trip has been all about living by the values of adventure in the romantic sense that I’ve written about previously. It’s left me feeling pretty fulfilled, but adventure is ultimately a selfish pursuit and I believe helping other people will leave me feeling more fulfilled. Of course, determining how to support oneself financially while living out your values is the tricky bit, but I think I’ve decided on a path that has a good fit, so my plan now is to switch values and see how that compares.
I blew up my roll mat and got a few hours kip on the floor beneath the seats, waking well before the ferry arrived in Italy. Maxim and I went up on deck and watched the sunrise as we approached Ancona, a red glow rising up over the steely cold sea. He tried to persuade me to come to Spain with him, but by that time I had made up my mind. The option to go down the path of adventure or spirituality will always be open so long as my mind allows it, and it’s comforting to know I can return to this lifestyle at any time, it’s open to anyone, for no money or qualifications are required. Thanks for making the journey more interesting Maxim, it was a pleasure to meet you.
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