Once a year, I host ‘WONDER WANDER,’ a multi-day gathering of creatives, adventurers, and all other sorts of fascinated-fascinating humans out in nature. We share, we laugh, we hike, we stargaze, we philosophize, we dive deep, and relish in this crazy experience of being with one another.

WONDER WANDER 2024, was the 5th go at throwing this grand "experiential potluck," built around a dozen or so humans all offering an experience for the group. And it was surreal and loving and interesting and learned and rad.

I cut the video from this year’s wonderwanderers spontaneously filming with an old vintage digital camera I brought this year — and love the feeling conveyed through this beautiful sliver of moments we captured.

Fellow riders on spaceship Earth,

May I introduce to you the ‘In This Together’ Bumper Sticker — a symbolic reminder that we are literally in this together, residing on a tiny blue-green ball of life miraculously afloat in the void of space.

One night, in a flash of inspiration, the whole thing: idea, phrase, and image, just struck me.

“Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it's a feather bed.” - Terence McKenna

Last fall, I was struck by understanding in an old, crowded diner in Nevada City, California. I was seated in a booth across from Ed Buryn, author of the 1971 travel classic Vagabonding in Europe and North Africa. It was an important moment in which golden wisdom was grasped.

I want to tell you about it, but first some backstory.

Released today! I sat down with my good buddy Milan Smets, for an interview on his In Full Effect Podcast. Originally from Belgium and currently residing in Vietnam, Milan is a videographer who’s led quite the international life. We met back in 2017 in New Zealand, both tramping about the country on working holiday visas.

We delve into personal perspectives of travel, creativity, interest, money, time, and a bunch of other subjects at deeper fathoms. Twas a good time, deep exploration, and real honor.

In life, there are rare things that are both easy and good. One of those things is reading while you poop — a practice often less literally referred to as “bathroom reading.”

Bathroom reading rocks because it is such an easy practice to develop. You don’t have to rearrange your priorities or work to make it a habit or anything. All you have to do is place a book within sitting reach of the toilet.

You see, you are a human being, and as long as your innards continue to function, you are regularly going to have to poop. When that special feeling arises, you make your way to your toilet, sit down — and hey — there’s that book you left here to read when this happens! You crack the book open and read while your autonomic functions take care of business.

This is a follow up to The Unsung Power of Symbols, in which I promised a list of the symbols I currently, consciously use in my own life. The intent is simply to provide some concrete examples of symbols to inspire ideas and act as a jumping-off point into the search for your own.

Below are six of my symbols, with a little what and why about each:

Last week, I was talking on the phone with my brother. Discussing my personal selling points for a book proposal I’m working on, he told me that whenever he describes me to someone whom I’ve never met he tells them:

“He does what he wants with his life and somehow seems to not feel the pressure that everyone else does to do certain things.”

Self-awareness is difficult. I never really thought of myself in such a way. My ego held onto the compliment like a pretty pebble from a stream, taking it from my figurative pocket and turning it over and over in my hand for it’s smooth, pleasant feel.

I do feel a lot less pressure to do “certain things” than I used to and suspect most people do. In reflecting upon it, I began to recall other instances of this curiosity.

This year was a year of discovery and evolution for me.

From life lived from a Honda Element to five months in the mountains just outside Yellowstone National Park to discovering the inner half of the human experience in a ten-day silent Vipassana meditation retreat, the lens through which I view the world was reshaped more in the past year than any year since a stroke quaked the core of my being at sixteen.

Perhaps the most important lesson from all this change was that we will continue to be shaped and reshaped as long as we remain open to the world. An unchanging worldview is not a sign that we've got it all right, but that we lack exposure to new experiences or are blind to what those experiences teach.

Two years ago, I posted an article titled, Why You Should Stop Watching TV and Be More Like Bruce Dickinson declaring my intention to stop watching television after encountering some startling statistics:

• The average US citizen spends 2.8 hours per day watching TV.
• Over an 80 year lifespan, that amounts to 9.3 years of passively staring at a screen.
• In comparison, we spend 1.6 years in school (K-12) and 10.3 years of our lives working.

Confronted with these figures, I saw a huge waste of time and an opportunity. There were much better ways to spend more than 10% of my life than passively staring at a screen. Two years ago, when I published that article, I cut all watching out of my life entirely: I stopped watching television, movies, YouTube... everything.

From Thomas Jefferson and Charles Darwin, to Oscar Wilde and Ralph Waldo Emerson, great thinkers throughout history did more than read the books they picked up. Many wrote and stored the most useful, profound passages in something called a Commonplace Book—an easily review-able collection of wisdom and ideas for their personal use.

We humans forget much more than we remember. The Commonplace Book was a sort of outboard memory, a way to keep and revisit our most insightful insights. In the 18th and 19th centuries, these collections of wisdom were so popular that "commonplacing" was an actual term for the act of writing in your Commonplace Book.

Somewhere along the line, Commonplace Books retreated from popular culture, yet thankfully, never disappeared completely. A year and a half ago, I discovered and began to build my own based on the index card system of one of my favorite authors. Today, I'm 56 books in and have over one thousand index cards comprising my Commonplace Book. I recently filled up my first "shoe box" of index cards, a milestone that inspired me to finally write this article.

With no idea of what to expect inside, each of my last steps up to the rim of the volcano allowed my line of sight a step further down into the crater. The world revealed was glacial snow surrounding the milkiest blue lake, a waterfall pouring over its edge running on through ice caves and out the eroded far side of the crater.

Assuming the crater would merely be a hole full of rocks, I stood atop, utterly stunned.

All alone and in my element, my body tensed into a slight crouch, drawing power as I took a couple rushed steps toward the edge. It was as if I were taking a half court shot with a basketball, and all this energy and wonder and excitement came out in this wild, charged, “YHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEWHOOOOOOO!!!” across this mammoth scene before me.

When you get away from it, it's easy to forget. And as long as you're away from it, you can never remember. But when you return—ah, when you return to it!—once again the truth is as clear as day and greets you as if you'd never left.

I landed in Christchurch, New Zealand last night. And I'm now sitting on a bus, winding through green valleys and rolling countryside dotted with countless sheep. After time away from nature, bathed in advertising, money, and status, such things tend to infect one's thoughts. Remarkably, though, I'm an hour into this bus ride and my compass has already realigned to true north. Take away the television, advertisements, and social proof of collective priorities held by those with constant exposure to such an environment and replace them with lush green, fresh air, and places that beckon to be explored, and the mental poisons of a consumer society quickly denature.

Not long ago, I couldn't even entertain the possibility of doing a handstand. Now, I can hold one for five or six seconds. At a glance, that's really not all that impressive. However, what happened between these two points in time is quite worthy of mention.

Way back when I was a little kid at recess, a bunch of my classmates were doing handstands, cartwheels, and other gymnastic type stuff. One week, it was just what everybody was doing. I'd never really tried or learned anything of a gymnastic nature and, unsurprisingly, I sucked at it. On the other hand, I played a lot of sports at home, and on the elementary school playground I always did quite well. I concluded that I was athletic, but not acrobatic.

For the next fifteen years or so, the belief that I was “athletic, but not acrobatic” shaped my life. I practiced and played all sorts of sports, believing that I was athletic, I got pretty good at many of them. I sought out athletic opportunities, but avoided acrobatic ones—I knew I was bad at those. Many years later, I still am.

We're designed to:

• Procrastinate
• Sleep in
• Take the easy way out
• Skip today's workout
• Value urgency over importance
• Seek comfort
   

Often, it's better to do the opposite:

Over the summer of 2013, I pedaled 4,450 miles across the United States on a bicycle with my brother. It rocked. You should do it too. Here's a list of everything I brought, so you know what you need.

In our lives, we should always seek to learn, to grow and improve as people. This is a lifelong process, we must never stop stretching our boundaries. In considering this a couple weeks ago, I wrote a list of 7 things I should strive to improve at.

1. Actively seeking new, scary experiences. New experiences are captivating and expand one's comfort zone. It's good to do things that push our limits and stimulate learning. The excitement is on the edge and that's where I want to be.