Both and Neither

 

A few years ago, I was wandering through Tasmania using my thumb as a bus ticket. Some days were incredible; meeting wild haired strangers, going on insane adventures and living in the way that motivational speakers tell you to dream. Many of those stories found their way into my book Never Homeless; all night jam sessions with instant friends, wilderness explorations full of joy and sleeping under the stars on the white sandy beaches. 

But in between those postcard moments were just as many days when nothing exciting happened and I questioned my life choices constantly. Days when I was so exhausted that I lay in my tent and stared at the ceiling. Days when I sat alone for hours and waited impatiently for more amazing stuff to fall out of the sky so that I might find distraction from inner demons. Days when I was fired up and ready to go and then all I encountered was the doldrums of a normal life. On those days, my confidence waned and my viewpoints soured. 

Sometime in this Tasmanian exploration, I don’t remember the exact day, I did a drawing in my sketchbook that I consider one of my most profound self-reflective moments in my life. The sketch is of two versions of myself. In one drawing, a jaunty athletic world traveler stands self assured, gazing out of the page like a rockstar, as if he just finished an epic adventure and is geared up and ready for more. He’s got a tank top, guitar and a smoldering grin. Beside that rockstar is a dweeb, looking overloaded and beaten down by life on the road. There is a little bit of belly paunch under the worn out hand-me-down clothes. He holds a plastic grocery bag filled with all the junk food that doesn’t fit in his overstuffed and smelly backpack. 

I love returning to this drawing because it captures my two sides so effortlessly. I can tell that when I drew it, I was jealous of the rockstar, because of the chicken-scratch labels I gave each person. I wanted to be cool and effortless, a little crazy and a lot of confident. But at that moment, the person holding the pencil was definitely tired. He was looking down at a newfound middle age, smelling sneakers that had walked a hundred miles through suburbia in stinky socks and couldn’t afford food that didn’t come wrapped in plastic. 

Other writings and photos show times when I was standing on a mountain top, barefoot and muscular, surveying Hourglass Bay and feeling like a world champion. I even wrote a story a few weeks later about feeling like a conqueror on a mountain top, eating an apple that tasted like heaven’s orchard and feeling like the king of the land that I had just crossed under my own power. 

In my quiet moments of memory, I can identify with both people on that page. When I am confident, it feels like I will never quit, never give up, never fail at my gigantic dreams. When I am feeling doubtful, even gentle hills feel like mountains. I fight every attempt at cheerfulness or toughness, complaining constantly that every little step is a massive effort. It is a rare occasion for me to not be sliding into one or the other of those two extremes even though I rationally know that I can’t inhabit just one end of the spectrum forever. 

There are times that a camera captures me in exactly the way I dream of myself to be. There are plenty of other times when I feel like the mirror taunting me, making me look bloated or balding, pale and slouching. How to navigate this delusion of self-worth is still unknown to me. The confident side of me says that all I need to do is keep exploring. The doubtful side says that it will be a whole lot of discomfort and wasted time. I expect that I will find the answer someday in another profound moment with a pencil in my hand. Until then, I will remain both and neither of the people on that page because that is inherently the person that I am.