Hitchhiker's Guide To Actuality | The Prospect & The Challenge - Foreword

A decade ago I never thought of hitchhiking as a real viable option for traveling around different places or even countries, especially considering the far-out prospects that come with it.

The logical mind often has great difficulty grasping the viability of this mode of travel before the first sucessful hitchhike - how am I ever going to reach my destination with so many unknown factors, an undefined travel schedule, and a lack of foresight into the specifics of the travel process?

In our day and age we have gotten really accustomed to traveling on time - when we book flights we do know the exact time and date when we will leave and when we will arrive, we pre-book a place to stay the night after the travel, we largely choose our experience beforehand and everything seems perfectly logical and expected.

In this manner, our conventional modes of travel are reminiscent of going on vacation in another country, only to spend most of our time in a secluded hotel with pool that has very little to do with the actual place or culture we traveled to. It's sterile, it's fake. In a way, one can spend an entire month in another country without ever getting in contact with people who actually live there, maybe except for the barkeeper and hotel roomservice personnel.

Hitchhiking is quite the opposite: It comes with a multitude of challenges, a load of uncertainty and - ultimately - great opportunities to not only meet other people in a more personal way than through conventional modes of travel, but also to meet oneself, through the ups and downs that this way of traveling can provide for those who dare to make the jump into the unknown.

So you want to hitchhike, huh?

Before we dive into any specifics in this series that you need to know let me say that - despite all the negativity, the fear and the "good-intentioned" warnings society generally dishes out to aspiring hitchhikers - it really is a pristine opportunity to grow and learn to become self-reliant. Hitchhiking - despite its uncertainty-characteristics - must be one of those things that has given me the most security in my life, because you learn how to handle yourself, how to deal with the unknown and how to face unexpected changes and hardships in the cosmic flow of life.

Ever since my first successful hitchhikes I know I can do it, I know I am able to travel to the other end of the continent on a budget of zero and that there is always hope even if I were to lose everything I had from one day to the next. With only a few experiences my rational mind has gathered all the proof it needed to realize that we are always connected and taken care of and that most of our fears surrounding the unknown are born out of societal conditioning that keeps the system running as it is, where people choose to pay for a false sense of security that will lead to little if any growth in the long run, more dependency on impersonal ways of dealing with other people and ultimately - keeping the fear of change and challenge alive in the subconscious to a point that we become rigid and stagnant in our rational mind.

Meeting yourself before you meet anyone else

Through the incredible ups and downs of a hitchhike journey you will learn to become truly free. Granted, it never becomes this automatic thing where you elevate to a new level and never fall back again - even after sucessful hitchhikes we may start doubting our next trip if it's been a while. But then we can easily recall the "improbable series of events" that happened last time and we continue to grow as we gather our courage and sense of capability when we are getting ready to depart to our next journey.

It won't take an hour until you already start recognizing certain things about yourself that you may have never been faced with consciously. Long before the first car stops for you while your mind goes "wow, is this really happening?!" you will see lots of people and cars driving by that won't stop.

You will start to wonder whether the sign you made is appropriate for what you are trying to do. You will start to wrestle with yourself wondering whether you are insane or just very naive in doing this thing that most people regard as crazy. You will start hating on those that drive by with a look of belittlement in their eyes. There will be people laughing at you, there will be little kids in the passenger seat staring at you and waving, there will be people shrugging helplessly as they take the exit to the highway with several cars behind them and no place to stop for you.

It might start to rain, your feet might be getting cold as you stand there longer than expected on your first attempt and there is always this tiny voice in the back of your mind asking you to just abort the mission, bail and walk back home.

BUT, as gruesome as it sounds, this is precisely what you need in order to get into the flow and to break through all the doubts in the way of the process unfolding.

It's like standing on a surfboard the first time in your life, being thrown off by the waves time after time, while all you can think of is how elegantly and effortlessly people on TV you have watched in the past ride the waves like it was nothing. Being a beginner can really suck - but then, everyone starts out a beginner. And as you get this idea trying to encourage yourself you have already taken the first step to a new mindset - the choice to have faith in yourself and your mission in light of the seemingly insurmountable resistance exerted on you by the environment.

And funnily enough, when I look back to my first hitchhiking travels - this realization of "everyone starts out a beginner" and "it will be alright somehow" is usually the moment the first driver stops for you with a big smile as if he were just hoping to find you standing there, gesturing you to hop in :)

To be continued...

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