I have no clue how it would have turned out if I would have grown up in a country without a safety net. I hope the same as I never needed that net and will never need it, however I am not so sure; it makes taking risks very easy...
If anything, having new experiences is what seems to slow down time in my experience. Visiting new locations, doing and learning new things. I suppose more things will be new to the young than the old, so it would make sense as an alternative hypothesis.
I've also had a bad tooth ache since the day before Christmas I haven't been able to get dealt with since all the local dentists are off, and it feels like it's been the longest week in my life. Dunno if I'd recommend it as a way of prolonging the subjective experience of time though.
Another anecdote is that last year I quit coffee cold turkey, and a side effect was that time seemed to slow down significantly. A lot of people seem to be reporting this. Make of it what you want. Quitting coffee also sucks quite a lot, though not as bad as week of severe tooth ache.
But in hindsight, time passes slow in periods where you had many new experiences and is almost missing in periods of routine.
So an exciting experience might be fast in the moment and slow in hindsight.
Wasnt there any emergency dentist available? In my location, there are those for these reasons.
But said and done, I came back on Monday, they looked at it again, said it was probably an old filling that was maybe acting up, basically just drilled a bit and filled it back up again. This made it hurt a bit less for about a day (specially during the procedure, even with them drilling into the tooth, local anaesthetic made this the least discomfort I'd been in for almost a week), but since then it's been aching again. It's not as bad as before, but still barely manageable with OTC painkillers.
So tomorrow I'm hitting them up again, hopefully I'm able to convince them to pull the tooth, since it's way back in the mouth and has been nothing but causing me grief since I got the original filling, food getting stuck and causing inflammation, that sort of stuff. The alternative would probably be a root canal, but since it's in a very inaccessible location, that's a real hassle.
That was the happiest I’ve ever been.
Childhood is mostly blocked out (abusive parents, poverty), and adulthood is mostly work.
Maybe we just remember the periods when we’ve been happy. It would make sense evolutionarily.
From my experience childhood felt like grinding my way to max level in an MMO. Had to be done to start playing the game but didn't really care for it. I had more freedom since I was 18 than before so I cherish those memories more.
Some really enjoy that, but the journey to max level was always more interesting to me.
There is a way to reroll; at least vicariously.
>I personally don't find the logarithmic experience theory convincing.
I think this tracks though. When you do art or other things you can explore different things. Doing the same thing for 40-60h per week is just not such a varied experience.
Sometimes the art comes first, sometimes the words come first, ultimately they all end up with a rough draft of both in an Adobe Illustrator file that gets refined into a final page, and then I make another file in the same directory, and another, and another, and another, until there's enough to be worth considering printing a book. Sometimes I realize I just have to sit down and figure out what the next hundred pages are gonna be shaped like before I can go back to worrying about what this chapter's gonna be shaped like, or what the current page needs to do. Really it's the same shape as any creative process: make a quick, messy version, ask yourself what's the easiest/most obvious thing to do to make it better, repeat that step until you're satisfied with it and/or the deadline hits.
An important part of the process is also directing interested people to my crowdfunding (https://comradery.co/egypturnash, https://www.patreon.com/egypturnash) so I can afford to keep drawing pages instead of seeking other work. :)
Tourism is generally forgettable and I don't recommend it to anyone - save the money and do something where you live.
Backpacking feels meaningful in the moment, but is also largely forgettable. I truly have almost no meaningful memories from 2 separate 2 month trips in Europe and southeast Asia.
The slow travel is most recent, was the most "boring" but also, I think, most meaningful as I was explicitly focused on self-reflection and discovery of a more meaningful way to live after many years (or a lifetime, really) of aiming to be a better cog in the machine. I don't have a lot of "memories" - highlights that I reminisce about - from it, but rather various phase shifts/epiphanies in my understanding of myself, life, the world etc...
I now live in relative poverty in a poor country where I have been working for 7+ years to develop a project for the benefit of the multitudes who can't even conceive of being able to do anything that I've just describe. And for whom even childhood is rather joy and wonder-less, because of how hard life is. I'm mostly glued to my computer again, but it's not soul sucking in the way it was in a cubicle with spreadsheets - because the purpose is meaningful.
I do miss the slow travel days - they were absolutely the most enjoyable period of my life. But I've also met people who have done that for decades and they're profoundly sad people - they have no roots or connections anywhere, no meaningful vocation, etc.
A meaningful life is to be actively involved in the sorrows of the world, with joy.
Still, I really ought to get a bit more play and exploration back into my life.
In the past year, I've been coaching teen soccer/football and that has been wonderful. Both to help me fix my desk-broken body, as well as to help them, principally, become better humans. To succeed on the field they need to develop the same characteristics needed to succeed in life - discipline, determination, cooperation, empathy, solidarity, creativity, perspective, vision, patience, and more. The world around them is largely bereft of such things, so it has been challenging.
But they're vastly better at playing now than a year ago, and I've heard they generally behave better at home as well. The difference between this and the article's version of living through your kids is a) they're not my kids and b) I'm focused on helping them become proper adults via play, whereas the article is largely about recreating Neverland where everything is childish. I expect it'll be unlikely that I'll instill much community spirit in them - though, perhaps we'll incorporate some community service into the training at some point. But it all does seem meaningful.
Still, the real focus and crux of my life is the overarching project to help people everywhere become more self-sufficient. Hopefully I'll be finally ready in the next year or so to "go public" with it, and that people will be receptive to using it, collaborating, helping etc...
Was your schedule oversubscribed in these ? I ask because my experience of pleasure travel is very different. More so when there were (i) very little schedule to speak of, other than start and end dates, (ii) had a partner to share the experience of unplanned discovery to share with.
Both, I think, make a significant difference to the experience.
The other biggie are photographs and writing about it.
I dont have any idea what this means. Could you try again in plain english?
Yes, not having a schedule makes for better travel, as I described in my later multi-year experience. I think most things could probably be made better by having a genuine life partner to share it with. But doing things solo absolutely does not preclude you from meaning. (moreover, I wouldnt describe most romantic relationships as anything resembling a genuine life partner).
Photos and writing are also not inherently meaningful. I did plenty of both and, again, I thought it was all meaningful in the moment, but since realized it was all largely misguided.
If someone were to travel in a genuine manner - where you integrate with local communities, get involved with their traditions, problems etc, then that's an entirely other thing. But just roaming (let alone an itinerary) is largely not actually useful, unless you put it towards something meaningful (eg genuine reflection and improvement, which would largely lead you to realizing that travels themselves are not necessary or even important).
Other than that our experiences are different and that's ok. People are different. It's always a pleasure to meet my past self through those writings (usually emails to friend and family) and photographs I took or were taken by others in the trip.
Agree with you on the part that it is absolutely possible to have a meaningful trip without a life partner.
also, i probably didnt make this point nearly well enough, but the real point is that travel is completely unnecessary and will absolutely not solve any of your real problems. More likely it will just distract from them, or make them worse. Whatever genuinely beneficial things you and your partner experienced together while travelling could and should be experienced wherever you happen to live.
"travel" is a completely foreign concept to living, that has only become "possible" to most people recently. For millenia, people learned how to live quite well without it.
We are creatures of our surroundings environment and changing the environment definitely helps regulate/alter internal states. Can it be done without the travel, presumably so, but travel makes it easier.
Besides all this stuff about internal state, that's too new agey for my tastes, travels are fantastic for its experiential / dopaminergic value, especially if it's a place that offers beauty.
My brain responds to the sights and sounds in the serenity of mountains in a way that I cannot recreate in constricted crowded settings of clutter. Maybe some people can, I just simply cannot.
Can one live without traveling, of course one can. One can live bed-ridden, paralysed as a born paraplegic. But that was never the question.
That seams like a rather uncharitable take.
To me it came across as being an adult about simple pleasures and joys. Not fantasy.
Perhaps it is because I super admire my friends that enjoy the simple things (one in particular has been rather successful as well). Other friends have big goals - I struggle with them - too often it looks to me they are partaking in a frustrating game of elusive status. Although as a geek, my status games are quite different from theirs, so perhaps it is just that I am misunderstanding them.
> various phase shifts/epiphanies in my understanding of myself, life, the world etc
That's interesting, and I've had that too when my purpose of traveling is to learn about myself (versus traveling just for pure fun).
> traveling
I've done a huge variety of traveling and long term backpacking (the luck of being paid well for a geeky childhood). My opinions about my experiences really don't match what you have written.
Could anyone who is extremely fortunate and never had to work for money share their experience on this?
I find that the years that I spent on art (playing around, learning new things, not taking other peoples' orders) lasted longer than the ones I spent doing software development for money. Both were fun, but the remaining memories differ by intensity.
I personally don't find the logarithmic experience theory convincing. Why are the first three or so years excluded from this? It seems more likely that new experiences make more impact, or that repeated memories make them more intense. Or dozens of other theories.