We wanderers

On travel, solitude, and the nature of true companionship.

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We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way.

This is from “The Farewell”, part of The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. Criminally, I haven’t read the book; I know the quote from a poster hanging on the door to my dorm room¹. This is what is spoken by the titular prophet to the citizens of Orphalese, where he has lived for 12 years, as he is about to set sail for a faraway place. A fuller excerpt reads as follows:

People of Orphalese, the wind bids me leave you.
Less hasty am I than the wind, yet I must go.
We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us.
Even while the earth sleeps we travel.
We are the seeds of the tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind and are scattered.

For most of my life, I’ve had lots of shallow relationships and few deep ones. (Case in point: there’s only one person from high school who I still count as a friend, even though I was “friends” with a few hundred kids back then.) I’m not sure how normal this dynamic is, but I feel like because of it, I value solitude much more than others I’ve met. It wasn’t always this way - I’ve spent a lot of time with people because I didn’t want to be lonely, rather than because I genuinely wanted to connect with them. Did it never occur to me to seek out my own company? Maybe it did, but maybe I wasn’t good company back then? It’s only recently that I’ve understood how valuable it is to have the ability to be you, by yourself, and be content.

Some brief Googling tells us that Gibran’s work focused on spirituality, and the departure of the prophet is (apparently) meant to be a metaphor for death². Still, I’ve been thinking about this quote a lot in the context of its surface meaning: leaving your friends behind and traveling alone. It has that effect that good literature has: it reminds you what is true, what you might not remember when you get lost in thoughts and feelings. Throughout my 40 days of adventure through Europe and the beginning of my tenure as a Fulbright grantee in Poland, I had plenty of time to ponder the truth in these words.

Suggested music: Chewie Melodies - Octopath Traveler Piano Collection Cover

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I mostly stayed in hostels during my 40 days, with hotel stays every now and then to slow down and recharge my batteries. I was taken aback by how inviting my hostel mates were. A bunkmate from Argentina who I’m greeting for the first time says “Hey, we’re going to go bar crawling in a few hours, do you want to come?” A German and I talk about studying aerospace engineering, and he immediately follows up with “Do you want to grab dinner together?” I don’t think I presented myself as a particularly interesting or inviting person. On most days, I was just some American resting his feet.

Did they not want to do things alone? I came to Europe alone because I wanted to do things alone. I don’t think I’m normal in this regard, as most people staying in hostels are very friendly and perfectly willing to hang out with complete strangers. This is not a travel guide; if you want to go places and have a good time with other people, don’t be dissuaded by me rambling. I just can’t help but question why one of our first instincts when travelling alone - when intentionally setting out for distant lands without company - is to seek out others.

Socially, I did have a hard time. It wasn’t about the people I was or wasn’t meeting. It was the friends back home who I missed, agonized over every night. I didn’t experience much in my first week because I was so emotionally torn, so stuck back home, running memory after memory through my head. Even so, I don’t think this pain of missing other people is by itself a valid reason to seek companionship. Every time I met someone new, a voice in my head would ask: do these people really mean anything to you? Or are you just going to them because you’re afraid of being alone? Would these people satisfy a need that could not be satisfied by a more difficult, more personal, perhaps more meaningful and fruitful journey?

I am picky about my relationships because I want them to mean a lot to me. If someone is my friend, they deserve my full attention when we speak. They deserve to expect a timely response when they message me. They deserve more than a single text once a year or a “that sounds great, let’s schedule something later” that never receives a follow up. I do have “friendships” that fall into that last category, and they make me feel bad. It just feels like I’m stringing them along.

That’s not to say I made no friends at all, but I made more two-day acquaintances than I did friends, and I am going to make a point to distinguish between the two. For example, pictured below is Guilherme, alias Big G, one of those genuine friends who I’m still talking with today. Not pictured are any of those two-day acquaintances.

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The loneliness got easier after my stay in Luzern, Switzerland. I hiked up nearby Mt. Rigi alone for an entire day³. The mountain was foggy, cold rain poured down during the entire hike, my legs were worn out from the last five cities of travel, and I didn’t bring enough sandwiches to last the hike. Theoretically, all this should’ve made me feel more alone and more afraid, but…well, it’s best if I show you the view.

Never before had I walked through clouds. Yes, I was starving and shivering and half-delirious, but I was walking through clouds! And if I was starving and shivering and half-delirious, then it was my will above all else that allowed me to keep climbing. Certainly no one was pushing me or carrying me along, no one was praising me for making it up what ultimately amounts to an easier hike among the peaks of the Vierwaldstättersee. No - I was my strength. I could decide to do things on my own and then do them, and that did not leave me starving for humanity.

The cold and exhaustion only accumulated as I climbed higher, but every ounce of it paid off as the view becomes grander, my position ever more powerful.

As I took the cable car back down I felt like a complete madman. A madman, a lunatic! Who goes out alone into those kinds of conditions simply for the sake of a foggy view? I did. If my two tired legs could walk up Mt. Rigi alone through fog and cold rain and an empty stomach, then they would carry me to Poland, too.

I would cry a few more times in the rest of those 40 days thinking of everyone I loved back home. Gradually, however, I came to accept that they were there, I was here, and things would stay that way for a long time. I began to walk around with more confidence, more belonging. When beautiful moments presented themselves, I no longer stopped myself from smiling.

Not every second I spent by myself was a happy one. That’s not what I’m trying to suggest, and I doubt anyone ever achieves that. It’s more to say that…well, imagine yourself alone in a room, away from conversation, away from devices, away from any connection to the rest of humanity. Imagine yourself alone, then conjure a mirror that reflects the soul. Look at yourself. Do you genuinely like what you see? Do you believe that the thing staring back at you is strong, beautiful, worth at least a few words in the annals of existence? Can you write the dedication for its gravestone? Do you know what it would say?

After the mountain, I could look in the mirror and be proud of what stood before me. The journey still had ups and downs, and I had some particularly unpleasant encounters in Paris, the Benelux region, and Germany. But I was no longer admonishing myself for taking such an unfamiliar path.

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I get wishy-washy when I write, so here’s the deal: I believe there’s some things you can only find by yourself. I believe we have a natural tendency to stay with the people and circumstances we are comfortable with, in a way that prevents us from finding those things. In me, I see this as a weakness.

I don’t think that should apply to everyone - some people need company and don’t need a lack of it, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But even if I want, even if I need the comfort of companionship, I cannot do what I want to do by hiding in familiarity.

Because of this, I might sound cold when I talk about the people I meet. I don’t immediately reject other people who try to connect with me, but I have little faith in forming deep bonds with most of the “friends” I can make. Too separated, too dissimilar, too busy with our own lives…it’s nothing personal. It’s just a matter of priorities. Is that cold? I prefer to think of myself as honest.

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When I entered Poland and had my Fulbright orientation, things swung back in the wrong direction.

It suddenly became so easy. For a week, I was surrounded by Americans, Poles speaking English, people treating me like I was important. I have this photo with the United States ambassador to Poland. It’s not a big deal, just a fun photoshoot, but still - I look at this photo and ask myself why on earth should I be in a photo with the United States ambassador to Poland?? This is not some 15-person company where the CEO can be in direct contact with every member of every team. This is a dishonest photo; we are not companions.

I didn’t care, because I could convince myself - and I wanted to convince myself - that being foreigners in an unfamiliar land was enough for us to be similar. Then I left for Łomża and this mirage dissipated. I cursed myself. So stupid! You stupid, desperate, clinging child!

Writing this, I find myself thinking about ancient traders traveling the Silk Road⁴. Maybe Persians bringing gold to China, or Arabs bringing silk to Anatolia. How did they react when they encountered other caravans? In my head, they say hello, maybe comment on the weather. They share word of opportunities and warn of dangers that they passed through earlier, because in my head they are good people and want to help each other if they can. If night is falling and they need to wait for the day, they make camp together, hitch the camels and the mules to the same posts, exchange meals and jokes and stories over a hearty communal campfire. And when day breaks, they pat each other on the back, wave farewell, and move on. In the words of an American poet, “I have miles to go, and promises to keep”.

I tricked myself into thinking that everyone would somehow be together every step of the way. That was not the case, because we all have our own miles to go and our own promises to keep.

The first few weeks after setting up in my host city, I was a hermit. It didn’t help that I got caught up in academic bureaucracy and didn’t start teaching until my third week. I don’t think I had real, non-stiff, non-professional interactions with other human beings except one weird conversation in the dorm kitchen and a meal I shared with my mentor. I had completely withdrawn into a shell and refused to come out until I was surrounded by easy friends again. This, of course, is my fault. The challenge I’d signed up for reared its head, and instead of being strong enough to face it I said no, hid in my room, and logged fifty hours or so onto Steam in a few weeks.

That easiness wouldn’t come until a conference Fulbright organized for the ETAs⁵ in Cluj-Napoca, a city in Transylvania, Romania. All of us ETAs in Poland gathered at a coffee shop at Warsaw Chopin Airport, and as the others showed up, I did something unusual and reached out to hug everyone. Isn’t that strange? For people I’d known for such a short time?

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I’ve ignored some of the obvious points. How do you expect to maximize your life experiences without other people? How do you expect to progress professionally or personally without other people? Humans need love like they need food and water; the CDC has an article dedicated to the negative health effects of social isolation and loneliness. I’m stubborn, but I’m not stupid. I still value companionship; even if I’m comfortable with myself, I’d still go insane if I didn’t regularly chat with my friends, and I’d be stupid to say no to every possible relationship I could make with people I meet. This I know from past experience.

I’ve learned to value the quantity of connection less than the quality of connection, how deeply you see into each other. I feel that I’ve met a lot of people for my short life, and I can’t remember many of them standing out on a surface level. Maybe because of this, I’ve noticed that I will be outgoing and friendly when I first meet people, but will quickly withdraw if I don’t find anything interesting in them. I realize I am part of the problem, since people don’t usually become interesting until you’ve spent some time together.

Think of it like an engineer: there is some optimal rate at which you make friendships. Too low of a rate and you will, as aforementioned, go crazy. Too high of a rate and you will be stuck sorting out which of your “friendships” are a matter of convenience and which ones actually mean something. All meaningful relationships start out as shallow ones, so you cannot avoid this sorting process entirely. But trying to love everyone in the world forces you to allocate more time and resources to sorting, so that you can determine who loves you back and who doesn’t. This in turn leaves less of you to love those who truly deserve it.

Most of “The Farewell” consists of the prophet thanking the people of Orphalese for all their virtues and vices and all the time they spent together, and the prophet assures them that regardless of physical location, he is there in spirit. Those who care about him do not need his presence to be better people, to feel the positive effects of his love, because it was enough to have met him and gotten to know him. For the people who truly add meaning to my life, I hope it is the same way.

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We made it to Cluj-Napoca after some shenanigans that was somehow blamed on me wearing pants.

The conference had American Fulbright ETAs from all across Eastern Europe. Poland was one of the western-most nations invited; we had others from Hungary and Bulgaria going all the way east to Armenia and Azerbaijan. We formed lots of shallow relationships, smiled lots of smiles that were bigger and friendlier than they needed to be. That’s how it felt for me, anyway. At this point in my life, I don’t mind so much - as long as we both understand the lie, there’s no harm done.

It’s not that they didn’t matter or that I didn’t care about them at all. They were cool, interesting, unique, and I’ll probably never get to see them again, in the same way that a Maserati you see parked on the side of the street is cool, interesting, unique, and you’ll probably never get to see it again. If the driver of that Maserati came up to me and offered to let me drive around the block⁶, then sure, I’d go for a spin. Long-term, however, it doesn’t particularly raise my interest in Maseratis. I did not come to Europe to see Maseratis, and seeing a Maserati in-person is not going to suddenly make me a car geek. I genuinely enjoyed meeting almost everyone I encountered, and I gained ideas and perspectives from our conversations that I’d be hard-pressed to find otherwise. And like I said earlier, half the blame is on me, because maybe if I had tried harder I could’ve made genuine friendships that would last until we were all in nursing homes. Still, I felt that most of us were talking because it was the professional thing to do, not because we wanted to stay in touch and keep digging deeper into ourselves.

The second night of our stay, I was invited to go bar-crawling with everyone else. I don’t drink and I don’t enjoy watching other people drink or talking with other people whose main intention is to go drink; plus, I was already exhausted from the conference day. I voiced these thoughts to my inviter, who replied, “Well, I think people are lonely. I think everyone’s just trying to get as much social time together before we all go back.” For some reason this made me very irritated. How do you go six timezones away from home and not expect to be lonely? I think I was so annoyed because I was mad at myself for falling into the exact same loneliness they were talking about. I hated that someone spoke my own truth at me.

I stayed in my hotel room instead and chatted on Discord with a friend in Michigan. I asked him, “What’s the point of us Americans coming to this part of the world just to stay with each other?” It’s not strictly about comfort or taking risks. The question is: what do you want to do? I came to Poland to teach in a country that I believe possesses a strong engineering culture, as well as to learn its history to help make sense of my Chinese family’s past. It was this friend back home, with whom I grew as a person, who bluntly answered, “Then why are you not meeting more Polish people? Just go on the street and ask them what there is to do around town. Why aren’t you doing anything there?”

I don’t want to run from my problems. I want to turn around and charge towards them. The most difficult times of my life came from denying what was wrong with me. If I am feeling lonely, then mingling with other people who are mingling for the primary purpose of avoiding loneliness is not going to make things better. The solution was to remember why I’d originally went to that lonely place.

I feel asleep late that night, invigorated by my friend’s words, kept up thinking about how I’d find leads back in Łomża for my personal project. All the things I could do, all the ideas I could teach, everything that would open up if I just stood up and went to it. No more idly sitting, waiting for days to tick by. I would do what I had set out to do.

Additionally, I decided I’d eventually visit all of the ETAs in Poland. We’d chatted and teased and revealed enough that I felt it’d be worthwhile. I feel that they all must have stories, more than meets the eye. “Normal”, boring young Americans do not apply to exchange programs to go to Poland. I want to visit them individually, and I hope we become close enough that they are willing to share those stories.

Is that a mistake? Maybe I’m lonelier than I think I am and I’m fooling myself into thinking they’re more than they really are? Just as they might be thinking I’m more than I really am? If so, no big deal; our conversations will dissipate to nothing, and they’ll simply join that long line of faces I can’t quite put names to. But I’d like to try to know them.

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Sometimes I think of myself as a rider on a path, sword and shield strapped on my back, burlap sacks of food and steel canteens of water stitched to the reins⁷. I know the destination, but not the path, and so I set my horse in the general direction and wander.

On occasion I spot another traveler. I know that we are not on the same journey, or else we would have started together. Still, we will ride alongside each other. We will tell each other where we came from, where we want to go, how we ended up on this same stretch of road. If there is some way for me to help them, then I will share what I can; I refuse to be one of those who abandons others for their own sake. With our banter we will punctuate the quiet that sits on the knotted hills, lays down to rest on the path’s cobblestones and hoove-trodden grasses, whispers lullabies in the wind to accompany the soft incandescence of the seasons painting the trees in brown, then green, then orange and yellow and red, then white.

Together, we continue on to the destination. Maybe we even make it all the way there. No matter - after Shangri-La, there will be El Dorado and Arcadia; Lios an Choill, the forest of the faeries; all the great lakes and secluded islands stretching their fingertips beneath the sky. Eventually, we will come to a fork in the road, and I will take the left, and my companion will take the right. There is no denying that I am stronger and that the journey was better for their presence, but I made the journey for the destination. I live for me.

One day I will set out with no destination except the one we are all destined to reach. Nowhere will call to me, no dreams will cross my eyes, I will no longer need myself. At that point, I will have nothing left to give my companions, and I suppose they ought have no further reason to ride alongside me. I hope when that day comes, I will be old and without the body to support my mind anyway. That way, I will be free to let future days guide me to that final destination. Miles gone, promises kept. That’s when it’s okay to go⁸.

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It’s not to say I never have doubts.

In my final year of university, I sat down to talk with one of my professors who was trying to persuade me to do a PhD. Because it was me and because it was her, that career chat turned into a bigger conversation on finding a meaningful life. She recalled stepping off the plane in the United States with a carry-on and a bag that fit under her seat, then working for years like the devil hung over her shoulder, ready to rip up her H1B and toss her like garbage back to a place that could no longer be home. During those years, what drove her forward was the thought that she might, over “here”, make easier the life of a young girl over “there”.

I don’t think most westerners would understand. It’s that feeling that your blood, the soil from which your ancestors sprouted, will stay with you, be you no matter where you go. You don’t need constant companionship, constant reassurance, constant affirmation; you receive that from your family buried in that soil, whispering in the winter wind, hissing in your ear that you cannot and will not be quelled by the new world.

I don’t know how many bags my family had when they came here. Looking back to when I was growing up, I feel that they were not as selfless. It was them, in my blood, speaking through me when I told my professor that I was not the same. I would abandon everyone else, let them burn to ashes if it meant protecting the people who mattered to me. Maybe we’d been hurt too much to want to save the world, but we could never be broken enough to abandon who we loved. You will be strong - there is no other option.

As I think back to her words, I wonder: is that strength? Or weakness? Maybe a good person would find everyone, keep everyone, love and hold onto every stranger stranded on the side of the road; a young boy over “there” I will never meet. Maybe solitude is selfish more than it is brave. Maybe the road I travel goes to nowhere at all. And yet the blood speaks: you will be strong. There is no other option.

Someday I will have the choice to not be strong. I don’t know what will happen when I get that choice. I wonder if all the friends I made will be at my side when the time comes, and I wonder if they’ll know what to do. Right now, what beats in my heart does not give me that choice, and so I ride forth relentlessly.

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We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way.

1. Obvious State sells these posters, I have a few and I think they’re great! ↩

2. I have a lot to say about death too (unless I die before I get to say it, in which case…well, oopsies). More on that some other day. ↩

3. Rigi isn’t really a full-day hike, but I was going slow taking pictures of everything. ↩

4. This analogy isn’t the most accurate considering us Fulbrighters are stationed by ourselves in our host cities. And also there were no phones or hotels or…well, a lot of things, but hopefully you get my point. ↩

5. ETA = English Teaching Assistant. Fulbright has scholar grantees, student researcher grantees, and ETA grantees; I am of the last category. ↩

6. in a way that didn’t sound like they were going to hit me on the head with a 2x4 once I got in and proceeded to harvest my kidneys. They’d have to be very convincing. Honestly, I can’t think of a situation where I accept the offer if it actually came up in real life; I am not interesting enough and not talented enough of a driver for honest people to let me drive their Maseratis willy-nilly. ↩

7. Yes, I know riding a horse is not that easy and that you need training to fight from horseback. In case you hadn’t noticed, my prose can get a little pretentious. ↩

8. I think. I’ve worried about it a long time, but I’ve never gotten close; so I’m not sure yet. I just try to comprehend it as best I can without going insane. ↩