The meaning of life

Post-trail depression is something all hikers are going to have to deal with. I mentioned in my previous post some of the hurdles. Some will be defeated by it, some will distract themselves from it, some will develop bad habits as a coping mechanism, some will undergo massive life changes in an attempt to permanently live as part of the trail, and some will learn from it and become better because of it. I like to think I’m the latter.

The core of the issue is that you’ve become accustomed to living one way, and now your life has experienced this tremendous upheaval that causes a lot of stress, restlessness, and confusion. You may have hated your life pre-trail, which could be why you started hiking in the first place. You almost certainly made some very close friends on the trail, and you’ve spent the past half-year doing whatever you want, whenever you want, with those friends. When you leave the trail you’re suddenly isolated from all of your best friends. Not only that, but no one around you can relate to how you feel, since they likely haven’t experienced anything similar. It’s rough.

I experienced a bunch of this myself. After the trail I moved to Texas to take a job, and I felt like I was unhappy because I hated Texas. Now don’t get me wrong – there’s plenty to hate about Texas, but that wasn’t the core problem in my life. I eventually looked closely at my life, and asked myself what specifically would improve if I were to move back to Iowa, or even to somewhere along the AT. I could hike, this is true, but there are actually a couple places just a few hours’ drive from my Texas home where I could hike too, and I hadn’t done it. Instead of blaming the absence of trail, I accepted the fact that hiking wasn’t what I ultimately wanted. I enjoy it, sure, but I don’t need to hike to be happy.

I felt like I didn’t have any friends in this town. To be fair, I actually didn’t have any good friends. I had a lot of coworkers that I get along with reasonably well though, so I was already in a better position than I would be if I were to move elsewhere. Moving would not magically create friends. I reflected on the fact that there are a lot of people in San Antonio that are happy, and if they can be happy here, then what specifically is keeping me from being the same?

Having just completed a couple significant upheavals and reformations of my life, I had some pretty unbiased perspectives at my disposal on the various forms of my life. This gave me some perspective. By comparing my life on the trail to the average citizen’s life, I was able to glean a few fundamental truths. This, coupled with a binge-drinking session and a fortuitous question from a stranger at a party (“So after completing this hike, did you learn any amazing life lessons?”), allowed me to finally put into words the core essence of what it takes to make a person happy. I am thoroughly convinced that these three things apply to everyone’s life, and not just my own, so I’ve decided to share them. I hope you can put this information to good use.

1. Surround yourself with people you love.

I alluded to this above, and now I’m saying it outright.  Humans are social creatures.  We can not be happy if we’re alone.  This does not mean you need to pair up and get married pronto.  It simply means that there are some people who you can’t help but enjoy being around.  When you find them, treasure them.  Personally, I can think of at least one time when I passed up a career advancement opportunity because a very good friend of mine had just moved to town and I wanted to spend time with them instead of moving away.  This was not a mistake.

As more time passes since my hike, I remember it less and less vividly.  The memories that stick with me though, are the ones I formed with Comedy Central.  Sometimes they drove me crazy because I wanted to hike further than they, but I would slow to their pace for the sake of staying with the family.  Until I started hiking with Comedy Central, I constantly had times when I wasn’t sure I wanted to finish, or when I wished I could just go home.  As soon as I joined them, every day was the best day ever, and the rest was a walk in the proverbial park.

Your best friends, the people you love, should be the most treasured resource in your life.  Do not take advantage of them to further your own means.  If you can ever be of any help to them, do so.  Spend as much time with them as you can manage.

2. The grass is greener where you water it.

Prior to my hike, I hated my job, I was bored with my life, and I was desperate for a change.  While I was hiking, I desperately wanted to go home.  When it was cold, I longed for a warm bed.  When it was hot, I wanted air conditioning.  While my legs were chafing and I was scratching caked-on dirt from my bug bite-ridden calves, all I wanted was a shower and a home-cooked meal.  Once I was back in a climate-controlled house and working a regular job, I longed to be surrounded by trees again.  At all times, I wanted what I had just left behind.  I was never as happy as I could have been, because I spent too much time focusing on what I was missing, and not enough time focusing on what I had.

While I was hiking, I should have been relishing the freedom, the quiet, the stars.  While working my 9-5, I should be focusing on the fact that I can shower any time I please, that unlimited ice water waits at my fingertips, that my house is whatever temperature I please, and that I’m never awakened in the night by Hurricane Irene flooding through my bed.

No matter where you are, there are good things to be enjoyed.  Stop lamenting the things you’ve left behind, and start figuring out what luxuries you have at your disposal right now.  You need to identify the things available to you that you love, and do more of that.

3. Say “yes”.

On the trail we called it getting “kidnapped.”  This was when you’d be walking down a section of road in podunk Appalachia, and some guy would pull up behind you in his car, roll down the window, and ask “Hey, you wanna come back to my house and take a shower?”  It may seem blatantly obvious that the correct answer to this question is “Absolutely not – keep driving or I’ll call the police.”  However, every thru-hiker alive will inform you in no uncertain terms that the correct answer is actually an unconditional “Yes please.”

Anyone in this situation is going to be a little scared.  Inevitably they already had plans for how their evening would pan out, and at the very least this invitation ruins those plans.  There’s also that chance of murder.  That being said, when I said “Yes” to Ernie Baker in New Jersey, he took us to his house where he did our laundry, fed us as much as we could eat, we took showers, we updated our blogs, we all got a bit trolley-eyed on a rare bottle of liquor, and we slept like babies in possibly the most comfortable beds ever to exist.  This is one of my favourite stories from the trail, and it only happened because I said “Yes”, even though I wasn’t entirely comfortable with the idea.

If you’re willing to take a bit of risk, life will reward you.  If you want to meet new people, make good friends, experience things you never knew existed, learn something, have a story to tell, or just start changing your boring life for the better, then you need to say “Yes.”  The next time anyone invites you to anything, I don’t care if it sounds like fun or not – if at all possible, say “Yes.”