Sunday, 15 March 1998
I sometimes see myself as a former monk who’s lost his faith – or one whose religion has lost him, and who is now searching for a meaningful existence in secular life.
I am, however, not yet fully immersed in this “new” life. I’m unfamiliar, even uncomfortable, with some of the ways of this world, especially compared to people who have lived their entire adult lives in secular society.
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Compared to most people I know here, I’m not a big success as a so-called backpack traveller. As they travel from one country to another, discovering interesting places first-hand, I prefer to set up camp in one place for a while and work my way through a pack of newspapers on a Sunday afternoon.
A little pathetic, maybe? Why? There’ll always be people who have done more than you, who have seen more than you, who have met more and crazier people than you, and who have done more and stranger things in more countries, and in more exotic countries than you.
I shouldn’t try to follow in other people’s footsteps just because I think my way of living is less impressive than theirs.
Stop competing with other people, I say. Do what you find suitable for yourself and what you like. If not for a better reason, do it because then you won’t have to measure yourself up to other people and in the process finding yourself too light, while that criterion is only one out of a million.
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