Category Archives: Travel philosophy

Ithaka Is Just A State Of Mind

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Ryan Murdock

I’d like to share one of my favourite poems with you today. It’s something I keep tucked into the back pocket of my notebook anytime I go on the road.

First, some context…

I’m a big reader of the classics. Apart from travel literature and history I read very little current writing, and almost no current fiction. There are just so many books out there, and I know I can barely scratch the surface of them in my lifetime. I’m not interested in a flash in the pan, or vapid pop culture. I want to draw on those ideas that still resonate with us after centuries of discussion, those writers who have stood the test of time.

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Posted in Great travel writers, Travel philosophy | 4 Comments

Show Your Faces If You Dare

Posted on August 4, 2010 by Ryan Murdock

Clive J. from the UK asked:


What do you know as a result of travel the rest of us don’t?


I think the most important lessons are things we forget in the day to day, not things we don’t know. 

When you’re cut off out there on the road, the everyday frivolity of life at home – office politics, the rat race, “noble” ambitions, catching every episode of some stupid TV series – it all falls away until you’re left with that pure, radiant core. You come to realize very quickly what is truly important to you. Traveling light, with all your necessities boiled down to what fits into your bag, you also realize what little you need to survive and what little you need to be happy. 

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The Chains That Bind Us

Posted on February 23, 2010 by Ryan Murdock

 

Surely everyone realizes, at some point, that they are capable of living a far better life than the one they have chosen. What usually stops them is fear of the sacrifices involved.

 

 

 

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Silver Drops on Thirsty Lands

Posted on February 18, 2010 by Ryan Murdock

It’s necessary to be alone to become fully aware of the way that music recalls the past, provides a soundtrack to the present, and gives hope for the future.

For those of us who travel alone, music fills those empty nights closed in by the walls of concrete rooms. And it entrances us on long journeys by bus or rail, occupying the conscious mind and allowing insight to float up from the depths.

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How Deep Are Those Lines Between Countries?

Posted on February 12, 2010 by Ryan Murdock

Borders signify change and a new beginning. They’re a crossing over into unknown territory, evoking feelings of possibility that contain great hope as well as great fear. But borders are also a closing off. When we enter new terrain, we’re closing off what came before both physically and philosophically. We can never go back. Nature allows no birth without a corresponding death.

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Posted in Central America, Travel philosophy | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Don’t Be Seduced by Immediacy

Posted on February 9, 2010 by Ryan Murdock

 

I came across a quote last week that I want to share with you.

It’s taken from a letter that Charles Darwin–the Father of Evolution–wrote at the end of his life. He said:

 

“Up to the age of 30, or beyond it, poetry gave me great pleasure. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry. My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, and if I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music several times every week. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.”

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You Can’t Buy All Your Dreams

Posted on August 5, 2009 by Ryan Murdock

 

first1.jpgAll travelers agree that no trip has the same soul-shaking impact of that first time you set out alone on the road.

Looking back, I can see how necessary it had been for me to go to Central America. I had to leave home to acquire the necessary vision and experience, to come to an understanding of what it is to live for living’s sake.

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Numen of Regret

Posted on July 29, 2009 by Ryan Murdock

 

It’s strange to think that after everything, when it’s all over, you just quit. Your light simply goes out and you are no more. What I find saddest about that whole notion is all the questions left unanswered when we die. Nothing will be solved. No one will tell us what it was really all about. How we did. Worst of all, we’ll never find the answers to all those nagging puzzles that haunt us.

We think of life as having a beginning, middle, and end. But it doesn’t. It either ends abruptly or trails off. Either way, there are so many loose threads left dangling.

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What is Road Wisdom?

Posted on June 26, 2009 by Ryan Murdock

 

Road Wisdom represents a way of travel, a way of seeing the world.

Road Wisdom is an absence of preconceived agendas, short of going deeper.

Road Wisdom is the collection of lessons imparted by the all-knowing road, if only you loose your grip long enough to get out of your own way and simply follow wherever it might lead you.

Road Wisdom has no time for the mundane, the 9 to 5, or the tick-tock world. It doesn’t exist in the corporate. It seeks the distance, the time, the space, the essence–unapologetically.

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Vagabond Dreams Outtakes # 11 – Taking the Path of Experience

Posted on June 17, 2009 by Ryan Murdock

Vagabond Dreams Outtakes are “deleted scenes” from my book. Think of them as a “Special Features” disc for a DVD yet to be invented…

 

I had finally come to grips with my task. I pondered the question of how to turn living into something more than just existing.

Time is our worst enemy. Youth seldom considers time; it seems so endless. But youth is characterized by hopes and dreams, and old age is too often the realm of unrealized hopes and dreams. What’s in between? Is that where I found myself at that moment? Or is there in fact no in between at all, just the sudden shock of realization that it’s all ending and you haven’t even begun?

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