Lies
When you set off on a journey like the one I have done, walking across northern India for nearly 2000 km, sleeping in cheap hotels or wherever I could put my mat on the floor without getting kidnapped or robbed, there are very few certainties besides the fact that you’ll encounter some troubles and that it also MAY be fun.
Deep within me, though, there was a slightly less obvious suspicion that could have been mistaken for hope: that I’d have uncovered truths about my own life that I was avoiding acknowledging even though they were hidden in plain sight. Stuff, I feared, that could make me uncomfortable and upset the status quo, which was unsatisfactory, ca va sans dir, but to which I held on with surprisingly unreasonable effort.
Busy as I was figuring out the daily “routine” of my pilgrimage-where to sleep, how to communicate, how to not get sick with the food, how to survive attempted robberies or vicious monkey and dog attacks- the first few weeks (let’s say all of Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand and bits of Uttar Pradesh) were somewhat fun, a bit stressful, and very adventurous but, in retrospect, I was only messing around.
I thought I’d become enlightened by playing the adventurer role.
Vagaboots, you fool.
The true revelations would have come only later thanks to a couple of combined reasons: major exhaustion due to walking up to 13 hours in a 35-degree weather and the monotony of walking for 20 to 50 kilometers per day. But most of all, they came when I stopped chasing a certain image of who I wanted to be seen as and embraced the pilgrim life.
I know the exact moment in which I felt first the armor of bullshit crack. It was weird and it came in the least likely place. But more on that later.
Once the routine set in, as “normal” as walking on dusty rural roads in India may be, and I wasn’t terrified all the time anymore but only a few hours a day, I had plenty of time to realize that my mind, the pilot of the body of yours truly, Mr. Vagaboots, was full of sh1t. I suspected it but my walk only was a confirmation.
We all tell ourselves many lies -that we were fair to that old friend, that we are perfect as we are and our ex is a narcissist, that we don’t need to hit the gym, or that we TRULY are the perfect candidate for that promotion- but the truth is: we are telling ourselves stories that it’s convenient to believe.
Sometimes those lies are rooted in our childhood, sometimes in past trauma, sometimes they are a practical crutch for laziness and self-indulgence. Those convenient lies shape our present, future and every single interaction we have. They even determine our success or failures in life. What we BELIEVE is our reality. And we, more often than not, look for elements that confirm our abstruse theories so that they can soothe the wounded child in us.
Even though all the signs in front of us say “go ahead”, we may think “Oh no, this is so dangerous, I will fail for sure or people will laugh at me”. For some, that woman glancing at us for longer than a second is an invitation to flirt, for others it’s proof that we were poorly dressed and we don’t deserve love. See how easy it is to have those narratives escalate within us?
Maybe the woman was not looking at all and she was simply thinking about what to buy for dinner.
One lie I used to believe is that the world is fundamentally evil. Well, not evil-evil but certainly not inherently good. That people were “out to get me”. Thankfully I never fully bought the narrative of “India is dangerous” because otherwise, I’d have never done my walk. Tens, maybe hundreds, of people, mostly Indian I have to add, were cautioning me to be careful and that I’d have been robbed blind and left in a ditch.
I walked 1811km over the course of 3 months crossing 7 states (for a total population of maybe half a fuck1ng Billion people), relying on the generosity of strangers to eat and sleep sometimes and I had only one attempted robbery on a Punjabi highway, from which I got away simply running away, and one pickpocketing attempt in a crowd of thousands of people, from which I escaped gently slapping the two men. And then running away.
Some people will decide to think that these two episodes will be proof that the world, or India, is dangerous and others, like me, will determine that 4 bad guys in an area inhabited by 500 million people is probably the best odds ever seen.
I am not here saying that the world is a beautiful Kumbayah drum circle with rainbows and teddy bears and that my walk across India was a piece of cake. I am here to day that my biggest challenges were my own beliefs and resistances created by what I thought certain things should have been, not the heat or the poverty or safety.
I won’t go much into what kind of lies I was telling myself as I am still figuring out the whole thing myself. But I do have a tip: keep in check your own bullshit.
Check for blind spots. Like when you rear-park.
The half-truths you are accepting are limiting you right now, as we speak. They may be hindering your love life or career or relationship with money or whatever. Or even what you think of yourself.
You know what it is.
Embrace it.
Some people on my walk touched my feet in a sign of reverence or even asked me to follow me, like a guru, as if I had some kind of superior knowledge. Each time i felt like a fraud and I simply explained that ego is the enemy of truth.
Even having a couple of thousands of followers on this platform now feels at times like having an echo chamber for my own vanity. And I don’t want that. I want to be authentic and sincere. Even vulnerable.
I’m just a guy who is still figuring things out, in India of all places, and who found out that the most effective way for him was walking. No easy fixes from me, only sharing mistakes I hope you’ll dodge.
A friend told me that if I wore a couple of rosaries around my neck, let my hair and beard grow and wore white or orange, I could start a very successful cult. Sadly, I agree.
It would be funny and I already have a name for that new course: VagaBaba
People love ready-made answers, pre-packaged solutions like the 4000$-5-star-3-day ayuasca retreats in countries where there is no history of use of the plant. People love the influencers with their overpriced courses, the fancy workshops where you are fed simplified, overly-complacent concepts taken from Wikipedia that are “guaranteed” to make your life better because it’s easier to follow blindly rather than ask ourselves “What do I REALLY need?”.
Ask it, please. Your inner voice knows it but you forgot how to listen to it.
What do YOU need?
Mentors and teachers are important, no one denies it, but be smart when choosing one. They say when the student is ready, the master appears. So, stay vigilant and save your money in the meantime.
Businesses, this awful capitalist system we are all so conditioned by, myself included, profit billions selling us pills, methods, seminars, you name it, and we, the suffering, the solutionless, the burnt out, pay whatever price in the hope that we may get better as long as it fits in a weekend or is compatible with our 9to5.
Growth and healing don’t happen in a weekend, friends. Just FYI, the process will never end, not even when you die ‘cause you’ll reincarnate and forget everything, and most of all: it will take a decade or two longer than you originally thought. So arm yourself with patience and compassion for everyone because this is our life
Earlier in this post (or rant) I mentioned the moment I felt my ego crack while walking across India. If you still want to hear about it, then stay tuned and wait for the next post in which I’ll tell you all.
Your truly, Antonio aka Vagaboots.