I enjoyed this book much more than I expected to. I had heard about this several times over the past few years, but always wrote it off. I have a wife with a job she loves, and two young boys who very much enjoy living near our extended family, so dropping it all and travelling the world is something that doesn’t really appeal to me. I finally decided to read the book after hearing the author on the Tim Ferriss podcast. It struck me from the interview that the author was talking about something much deeper than world travel, and I thought might have some real alignment with ERE.
This impression was borne out by the book. In fact, if you replaced every instance of “Vagabonding” with “ERE”, you might not even gather that the book is encouraging world travel. This one quote summed up for me what I got out of the book:
There are lots of great nuggets like this (I’ll save the exhaustive list of my favorite for the end of the post). The core of the book is an analysis of the expensive, 9 to 5 till 65 lifestyle. The author uses extended slow travel as his alternative to the typical rat race, but there’s nothing to indicate it’s the only alternative. In fact, there are many places where he seems to indicate that mindset is way more important than the actual act of long term travel:Vagabonding is about using the prosperity and possibility of the information age to increase your personal options instead of your personal possessions.
So the real enemy is the close minded, rigid mindset that is so easy to fall into in everyday life. Travel could potentially be a way to help break this mindset, but if you can’t get there in your day to day, what have you really gained? I’m not disputing that it could be interesting to travel this way, and maybe if my wife gets a sabbatical, we’ll try it, but until then, I think there are a lot of philosophical bits, that could really be applied today. I also added a few things to my reading list based on the quality of some excerpts, in particular “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”.Vagabonding is about not merely reallotting a portion of your life for travel but rediscovering the entire concept of time. At home, you’re conditioned to get to the point and get things done, to favor goals and efficiency over moment-by-moment distinction. On the road, you learn to improvise your days, take a second look at everything you see, and not obsess over your schedule.
I’ll close with my list of favorite quotes. For reference, there is another thread that discussed this book, which mentions several other great quotes. I will start with one that I think we could all try today, right out our own front door:
Walk until your day becomes interesting—even if this means wandering out of town and strolling the countryside. Eventually you’ll see a scene or meet a person that makes your walk worthwhile.
Instead—out of our insane duty to fear, fashion, and monthly payments on things we don’t really need—we quarantine our travels to short, frenzied bursts. In this way, as we throw our wealth at an abstract notion called “lifestyle,” travel becomes just another accessory—a smooth-edged, encapsulated experience that we purchase the same way we buy clothing and furniture.
Ultimately, this shotgun wedding of time and money has a way of keeping us in a holding pattern. The more we associate experience with cash value, the more we think that money is what we need to live. And the more we associate money with life, the more we convince ourselves that we’re too poor to buy our freedom.
Vagabonding is not a social gesture, nor is it a moral high ground. It’s not a seamless twelve-step program of travel correctness or a political statement that demands the reinvention of society. Rather, it’s a personal act that demands only the realignment of self.
Ultimately, then, the first step of vagabonding is simply a matter of making work serve your interests, instead of the other way around. Believe it or not, this is a radical departure from how most people view work and leisure.
At times, the biggest challenge in embracing simplicity will be the vague feeling of isolation that comes with it, since private sacrifice doesn’t garner much attention in the frenetic world of mass culture.
Fortunately, finding a singular travel experience doesn’t require heroism so much as a simple change of mind-set. The reason so many travelers become frustrated while visiting world-famous destinations is that they are still playing by the rules of home, which “reward” you for following set routines and protocols. Thus, on the road, you should never forget that you are uniquely in control of your own agenda. If the line for Lenin’s tomb outside the Kremlin is too long, you have the right to buy a couple bottles of beer, plant yourself at the edge of Red Square, and happily watch the rest of Moscow swirl around you.
The key in all of this is to trust chance, and to steer it in such a way that you’re always learning from it.
Interestingly, one of the initial impediments to open-mindedness is not ignorance but ideology. This is especially true in America, where (particularly in “progressive” circles) we have politicized open-mindedness to the point that it isn’t so open-minded anymore. Indeed, regardless of whether your sympathies lean to the left or the right, you aren’t going to learn anything new if you continually use politics as a lens through which to view the world.
Moreover, spirituality is an ongoing process that deepens with the seasons—and those who travel the world hoping to get “blinded by the light” are often blind to the light that’s all around them.
We’ve stifled our curiosity because it’s time-consuming (and time is money).
Integrate the deliberate pace and fresh perspective that made your travel experience so vivid, and allow for unstructured time in your day-to-day home schedule.
