Where Does This Go?

Press pause.

Zoom out.

Now look around. At your room. Your home. The garage. The town you live in or near.

What do you see?

I’ve spent nearly three years traveling. Texas, Arizona, Missouri, Washington, New York City, Kansas City, the Andes Mountains of southern Colombia. Morocco – Casa Blanca & Marrakech.

You begin to notice things. Our brains naturally observe patterns, whether we intend them to or not. The child who learns the current state of an addict parent based on the intensity of the door being shut when they come in, or how loudly they step. The student who notices by the professor’s stature their confidence in the lecture about to be given. The fan observing the way an athlete carries themself back to the bench or dugout after being robbed by a great play for the defense.

There is a rhythm to a culture, and you can feel it walking the street. There is a stage of a community’s growth or decline, and there you see it, surrounding you. And there is a great deal to be learned about your own state of mind, simply by observing your surroundings.

Morocco is not technically a police state, but by all rights is near and next door. These are low trust societies, as the secret police are just that – secret. Combined with significant restrictions on a number of civil liberties, a lack of natural resources to provide inherent wealth and opportunity, and the relentless sun, it felt like a walking among a pride of lions with anxiety. I was schooled in paying off the police and minded my P’s & Q’s as best I knew. I left loving the joy of the people in private while fretting most of my moments in the public.

To be clear – at least the system in Morocco is a bit more…entrepreneurial. To be sure, bribery in the states is overall much more systematized and nationalist. What better describes a means-based legal system than the difference in conviction rate and sentencing severity as influenced by how much per hour the defense lawyer makes? In Morocco it goes in the hands of a policeman, here it works it’s way onto billboards.

Colombia was a breath of fresh air, literally and figuratively. I lived among the indigenous mountain people – shy, uneducated, and constantly cheerful. Smack dab in the middle of cartel country, I walked six miles round trip each day to a little village for huevos y carne, often stopping at a roadside eatery for my third snack of the day. Never once did I fear, even when a motorcycle with a man about my age stopped me on an empty stretch of road. Turns out he was the cousin of the eatery proprietor and wanted to offer a ride, for which he refused to take payment. At the CostCo-knockoff, every fiftieth patron received half off their purchase, and when the blue light started to flash and the alarm went off indicating which aisle had just produced another winning – the entire store would stop and cheer. Every time.

The Texans talk slow and move with the ease of a people who take pride in their rich heritage, strong baseline morals, and ability to rise through the rungs of the economic ladder. Washingtonians seemed to publicly support the beauty of their state and revere it’s protection, while doing their best to gracefully tiptoe through what have become debilitating state policies regarding the ability to run a business. St. Louis is the closest thing I’ve ever seen to what an urban war-zone may be imagined. The majestic buildings and stunning monuments of what was once one of the world’s greatest cities appearing like a stoop-shouldered, proud gentle giant, cradling a sick and troubled child.

But keep going. Go further. What is here now that wasn’t before?

Stuff. Stuff we pay to put out of sight and out of mind. The acres of storage units, filled with stuff. The nightstand with no room to set a cup, filled with stuff. The basement and garage – stuffed with stuff. We walk past once, twice, and then it becomes part of the scene, a permanent fixture.

Take my money and hold my stuff. Take my money and do my stuff – shop for my groceries, make my food, wash my car, mow my lawn, do my laundry, clean my house, raise my children, decide my entertainment, dictate my mood, mindset, and values.

The stuff is too much. There’s too much stuff. It’s overwhelming. Two hundred apps on a phone, twenty pairs of shoes, a dozen drink thermoses, a trillion videos.

We can’t take it. We are but simple creatures, animals with a central nervous system fundamentally unchanged for millions of years. The tribal people of the african plains, who found safety in numbers and death in every mis-step – they have the same brain as you, me, Elon Musk, Randy Travis, George Orwell, Vladimir Putin, and everyone else.

It is a brain forged in the fire of eternal danger and everyday existential threat. A noggin not optimized for discipline, but for survival from one moment to the next.

The Great Depression branded our grandparents with reverence for stuff – anything you had was valuable. Our parents were imprinted with this scarcity precisely at the moment everything became abundant, cheap, and easier to replace than fix. And now we see young people lost in a world of infinite options, opting to hide in the digital world, where at least there are rules to the game. Desecrate your body and call it authenticity, the view counts rise. Stream the extreme, and watch the likes pile up. Sell your soul, payable through cashapp or venmo.

Though we are evolved to survive, we yearn to thrive. Each of us can recall the glory of the pursuit, the journey, the mountain climbed step by grueling step. In it we discovered a resilience unknown, pooled hidden reserves, and struggled on in joy. And then…for many, it has become too much. Checked out, resigned to slow boil of comfort, marching without vigor to the next disappointment.

The soul yearns to suffer for purpose, for it whimpers when idle. Like a horse in the box, we bounce with restlessness, waiting for the flag to drop.

There is no flag. The gates are open, and the fear is that we run the race alone, not knowing the distance, discouraged by the thought the finish line may never come into sight.

And we are right. There is no end, just as there is no beginning. Only now, the moment in which stop deciding and take action. There will be pain regardless, and what you do the second you finish this is the difference between growing pains and bed sores.

Go.