Travel To Grow

Kind of a continuation of my post on how language shapes behaviour I’d like to talk about this idea we have of love.

I think how we think and talk about the idea of love… doesn’t really match reality, and it actually causes us a lot of trouble or at least some confusion.

Us humans have a habit of breaking down complex things into simple, easy to digest parts. We take the infinite spectrum of color found in a rainbow and break it down into basic blocks of red-orange-yellow-green-blue-purple. We tend to think of things as either good or bad, when we know there is a large grey area in between… and we do the same when it comes to love… either you love someone or you don’t… it’s like a light-switch without the grey area.

Sometimes it’s useful to break things down into their basic parts… it would be a whole lot less convenient to describe the colour of the sky as 236 parts blue, 206 parts green and 147 parts red as photoshop might describe it… but the problem comes when we forget that there are these complexities… and then we are forced to pick the perfect color for the paint on our walls from the basic red-orange-yellow-green-blue-purple choices.

In the English language we try to break up the concept of love a little bit… we have “don’t like, like as a friend, like like, love, she’s the one” ect… but these divisions still don’t do a very good job in representing how love really works or feels. They seem to be influenced by fairy-tales and hollywood movies, where the main characters are “just friends” until one day they finally realize they are “in love” (how romantic) and passionately declare it to each other.

It seems to be through logic and experience that love actually works like colors, on a spectrum. It begins at 0 and then has an infinite amount of levels all the way up until whatever the maximum capacity for love is.

In other words maybe you’ve just met someone and you feel a little spark and have a bit of love for them at… lets say… 30 points, then after a few dates when you have a solid crush on them your at a 70… then after being together for a while and really falling for each other your at 130… then when your convinced they are the perfect one and you want to be together forever you might be at a 200… then after a big fight about something important you drop to a 160… or after 10 years of marriage when you have grown in different directions you slowly move down to a 60…

Thinking about it in this way… rather than the light switch on or off way… just makes way more sense…

Love and romantic/sexual interest are also completely different things… we all know you can be sexually attracted to someone you don’t love and vice versa… but isn’t the love the same?

Maybe when you meet an attractive stranger in the bar your romantic interest is at 100 but your love is near 0… or for a same sex friend or family member your love might be at a 100 but the romantic interest a 0…  and maybe when two long time male/female friends get drunk and something romantic happens… they both had a love of 60 and a romantic interest of 30 for each other…. but the alcohol boosted that romantic interest past the threshold.

Imagine that last situation in the old way of thinking about it… and how complicated it would be:

“oh my god… we were ‘just friends’ so we didn’t love each other… but then we got romantic… so… did that mean we secretly loved each other before? does that mean we love each other now? is our friendship ruined now? can we still be just friends after this happened? is our relationship changed now?”

That kind of thinking is so convoluted and restricted and unnatural… it doesn’t make much sense to me.

When I was in China I used to hang out with these 3 beautiful Chinese girls. Each one of them had boyfriends, so nothing ever happened between us… but if I were to be honest I would have to say I loved them all as friends… let’s say at a 70… but I also had a romantic interest in them all as well… maybe a 60…

In the ‘normal’ way of thinking this might have been a complicated situation… hollywood would say that you can’t love someone and also be fine with being friends at the same time… I would have to either put my feelings aside and just ‘be friends’ in order to prevent the friendships from being ruined… or else I would have to just go for it and confess my feelings and try to win them over…

…This is total nonsense though… Why would it have to be one or another? Why are we programmed to think this way? I was completely fine loving these girls as friends and also being interested in them romantically… why not? I think this concept only seems so strange because of how we try to put the ideas of love into such restricted categories.

The truth is, when you stop your mind from trying to categorize everything, and to fit everything into its box… the alternative seems so much more natural.

I hope it seems pretty obvious at this point that love and romantic interest works more like a spectrum than a light-switch… but how often does our habit of treating it like a light-switch cause trouble or confusion?

How about in new relationships? As this clip from ‘How I Met Your Mother’ shows, we put so much weight on the first time someone says “I love you” and if they say it too soon than its super weird!

How about after a breakup… for a couple that still wants to remain friends afterwards… The question that inevitably comes up at some point “Do you still love me?” is so tricky to answer! This happened with my ex… and the problem is… because I didn’t want to continue the relationship… I had to say “No” even though I still love and care about her a lot. I later then settled with “I still love you as a friend.” but like… who am I kidding? It’s not like she became fat and ugly instantly and I lost all romantic attraction for her… The truth is more complicated… Perhaps I once loved her at a 150, and now it’s more of a 90 or something… and logically I know I don’t want the relationship to continue… but I still have romantic interest in her, and care for her…
… but its obvious how complicated and restrictive and unnatural trying to answer these light-switch love questions can be.

How about love for strangers? I’m a big fan of the idea of loving ones neighbour, spreading peace and happiness and kindness to strangers… The whole oneness we’re all in this world together, love for the human race thing… But like, even writing this makes me sound weird because of the whole lightswitch thing… I’m only talking about like a 5-10 on the love scale… it’s nothing serious!

I was doing a free hugs event in Toronto during the summer. Spreading the happiness of hugs to strangers… But then one guy came up to me and said “Sorry dude, I don’t love you, I only like you.” And instead offered me a handshake. It was fine and all, but it made me realize the light-switch categories in his mind… In his mind its weird to love strangers, but fine to like them… and on top of that… hugs are only reserved for people that you love… hmmm…

Here’s another question Chinese girls like to test me with when we talk about culture and dating. They always ask me… “Is it okay to have sex with someone before you fall in love?” Then I am severely judged by whatever answer I give.

The problem is that the whole question is flawed! First it assumes that love is either on or off… and secondly it assumes that love and sex are interdependent. Large judgements of my character are being made by these girls… when the sad truth is their entire method of thinking is based on false assumptions.

So why do we try to fix these complex ideas of love and romance into little on or off categories… Well like I mentioned at the beginning, humans love to do this in all areas of life because most of the time it useful… but secondly it because of the influence of our language like the last post talked about. In our language its either “I love you” or “I don’t” we’re either “Just friends” or “We’re dating”… The truth is… unfortunately due to our language its hard to talk about love any other way… None of us want to rate how much we love our friends on a number scale… and of course the numbers would mean different things to different people… But the key is to not let the simplifications of our language let us lose sight of the underlying complexities of these things… to not lose sight of reality and the truth of our feelings because of some holly-wood ideas of what love is… and to try our best to stop thinking in these restricting confusing on and off terms…

…and perhaps instead… just honestly and openly follow the true feelings in our hearts… without any restrictions, expectations or rules.

Recently my study of the mandarin language has lead me to a new theory.

As I’m sure you know, different languages have different ways of explaining certain concepts and ideas… and even have different words or concepts that are completely absent in other ones…

I was talking to my Chinese ex-girlfriend today and asking her how to say ‘casual dating’ in Chinese… where you are casually dating 1 or more people, but your not serious yet… your not at the exclusive point yet… before there’s a need to worry about commitment or anything like that.

and to my surprise she told me… “That’s literally impossible to say in Chinese.”

She said “we only have jian mian which means, to meet up with someone (but is mostly used for friends nothing to do with dating) or we have yue hui which is like serious exclusive boyfriend and girlfriend dating.”

Then I realized… (from my experience living in China) this is exactly how nearly all Chinese people think… you need to really really like someone before you can go on a date with them… and it needs to be exclusive and serious from the get go…

This then reminded me of all the times I tried to talk about the idea of casual dating with Chinese girls and had them accuse me of being a dirty foreigner who just wanted to play with girls…

…So I thought… even though the Chinese culture is exposed to this idea of casual dating through the media and all their American tv shows, most of them still don’t understand the idea… or think its totally strange and unacceptable.

So my theory is… is that language is more important than we think… that language itself is actually creating/maintaining this cultural behavior…and that because they don’t even have a word to describe this… it is automatically such a strange foreign thing… and it make it seem normal, is nearly impossible.

If the idea itself is not even present in their language… how could it be a normal or natural thing? How could it not automatically labelled as strange by default?

It works the other way too… in China they have something called shanghuo 上火 (begin-fire?)… and because we don’t have the words to describe this concept in our language its nearly impossible for us to get it…

It has to do with the balance of Yin and Yang and is a symptom that occurs when the balance is out of wack… resulting in sore throats and other things… and has to do with certain dietary choices… and also has to do with getting angry about things… It took me like a week to understand it by that definition and it still seems so foreign to me.

But this idea of shanghuo is such a big part of their daily lives. Everyone understands it and accepts it as self evident. When I tell them we don’t have shanghuo they likely think its as strange as, how strange I think it is that they don’t have casual dating.

I think it’s likely that originally the culture created the language, but now i think the language is maintaining the culture.

Another example is “Wenti”It means question, and it also means problem.Chinese people really don’t like to question things or their bosses or authorities… They aren’t encouraged to ask questions in school, or to question the ideas of others… Perhaps because each “question” has the same meaning as being a “problem”

How much of our own behaviour is shaped by the language in which we use. We can see clear examples of this when it comes to abstract concepts such as ‘Love’… based on our language we tend to talk about love as either being an on or off switch. Either you’re in love or your not. But things in reality are never really that black and white, there are always so many shades of grey… but you can see how our behaviour within relationships is affected by this idea.

When we realize that every single thought and concept inside our minds is verbalized using the language we were raised with, the importance of our language becomes more apparent. How many real world concepts are out there in other languages that we don’t have terms for in English? How many times do we oversimplify abstract concepts like good and evil by using single words to describe them? As a world full of blind people would never know they were missing sight… What kinds of concepts and ideas are we missing because we don’t have words to describe them?

Studies have shown that language affects not only how we think but also our motion perception, emotion perception, object representation, and even memory.

One of my favourite books by Malcolm Gladwell titled “Outliers” shows that speakers of Cantonese Chinese have a much easier time remembering long strings of numbers because each number has a shorter pronunciation that its English equivalent… allowing their short term memory to hold more digits in a short amount of time. I tested this out while in China too and got crushed by my Cantonese friend!

Whether language really shapes behaviour or not, and to what extent has yet to be proven, but it makes a whole lot of sense, and can help to explain some of the troubles I have in understanding my Chinese friends and how they think.

Interesting stuff… tell me your thoughts~

An important part of understanding the world and all of its crazyness is empathy.

If we can put ourselves into the shoes of another, and understand life from their perspective we can take great strides in understanding the behaviour of people around the world.

We should try to understand that all people are just doing what they think they should do to be happy. It’s the goal that everyone shares, however countless environmental influences can affect how it is expressed in different people.

The money hungry CEO, the terrorist, the corrupt government official, the martyr, the nun… If we want to understand these people we need to understand where their current mindsets came from. and to do that we need to understand the various influences that have shaped who they are during their entire lives on this earth.

Besides minor genetic influences which can be overcome, people are not born good or bad, corrupt or pure, or any of the characteristics we attribute to personalities. They are shaped by the world in which we live, the information they have, the skills they have developed, the mindsets that have been programmed into them through their experiences and the situations they have been exposed to.

Unfortunately we can’t take a person and experience what they have experienced and seen what they have seen and have our minds shaped the way theirs have been… however we can do little thought experiments, to imagine for ourselves what it would be like to grow up in different times or situations and to be shaped by different environments.

Through this empathy we can begin to understand the behaviour of others… that is not to say, we should excuse, condone or condemn the behaviour, but at least we should understand it.

An amazing talk in this area that I have seen recently is by Sam Richards called A radical experiment in empathy.

Check it out below.

Does this talk help you to understand your fellow humans a little better?

We’ve all heard the question before:

“Does money bring happiness?”

and we’ve all heard the various answers. We’ve heard of millionaires being miserable, we’ve heard of people with nothing being incredibly happy. and on the other side we see happy wealthy people with wealth in all areas of their life, and people who are so poor they suffer endlessly because of it.

Many of us feel that if we had more money we would be happier… almost all of us get excited about the idea of winning the lottery, a substantial raise always seems like a good thing… Yet we also realize the best things in life are free. We go camping to get away from the material world. We see the problems the lust for money creates in the world.

So what’s going on here? Why is there such conflict between the idea of money and happiness?

It is my theory that the problem with asking the question “Does money bring happiness” is that the question is flawed. My idea is that money does not directly relate to happiness at all… and if the relationship does exist, its very weak at best.

Money does however seem to have a direct 1-1 relationship which something similar… Something that when used effectively can create happiness, or when limited or not exercised properly can cause unhappiness… which in turn would explain why people with similar levels of money can be on such opposite sides of the happiness spectrum.

This 1 to 1 relationship, is the relationship between money and freedom.

Think about it. The more money a person has, the more freedom they have. And the less money a person has, the less freedom they have. The relationship is direct and complete.

On the poor side of the spectrum you loose the freedom to live in the kind of house you want, drive the kind of car you want or even own a car, put your kids in the types of schools you want, receive adequate healthcare (in some countries), you have no freedom to travel, and if you get poor enough you might not even have the freedom to buy food and survive. When money drops to 0 and without other intervening factors, you loose even the freedom to live, as hundreds of thousands do around the world every single day.

On the opposite side of the spectrum you have those free to see the world, buy the things they want, make more money rather easily, have the best healthcare, the safest security, get the best education, have the most free time, have the best experiences, control others, with enough money they may even be able to transcend the rules of the law by paying off the local law enforcement.

and those in the middle will have an average degree of freedom in these areas.

Now of course some of these freedom factors can relate to happiness, but you can clearly see that the relationship between money is directly to freedom and the rest is just an after effect of that.

Now when we accept that money = freedom and lack of money = lack of freedom we can begin to notice something rather off putting. We are all born without money, so we are all born with a serious lack of freedom, (apart from the freedom our parents provide to us)… essentially we are all born into a world of slavery where we must earn our freedom through countless hours of education and hard work.

Now of course some of us are lucky and born into families that already contain a high level of freedom, so we can have a lot of our freedom easily given to us… or we can be given great opportunities to earn a bit of our own freedom quite easily…  But the sad truth is most aren’t so lucky and a great deal of the planet is born into families who have little or no freedom to spare.

Based on this understanding we can see that our freedom is directly limited by the amount of money that we have. Now while the majority of us in the rich countries have a large enough amount of freedom that we don’t really feel our freedom is all that restricted (except for our 9-5 jobs in which we have accepted as normal and necessary) we are around the world beginning to see the problems with this correlation. The big problem with this relationship is the idea of debt that we have created.

Money is essentially created out of thin air through the fractional reserve banking system, and must be repaid. However once the application of interest is put on top of it, there is less money in existence than that which needs to be repaid. This results in the necessity to add more and more money into the system resulting in less value for each dollar, and a need to accumulate more and more to maintain our level of freedom. In turn this creates higher and higher debts and less and less worldly freedoms.

In case I’m not being clear… “If all debts in the world were paid off, there wouldn’t be a single dollar in existence”

This of course helps to explain why the US debt is over 14 trillion dollars… and rising.

One of the questions I hope this article raises is: “What type of freedoms should be universal for human beings?” and of course, this question must be considered from the perspective that money = freedom. Should human beings be born with the freedom to have access to food and water? Or should that be a freedom that has to be fought for and earned? Our current minimum level of freedom on earth, is welfare in some countries, a couple homeless programs and stuff like that in the rich countries, and practically nothing but the occasional food drive for the hundreds of thousands in poverty around the world. With technologies in existence such as hydro/aquaponics, earthship homes, super-capacitors, renewable energies, and countless countless others, should we really have such a low default level of freedom on earth?

Another thing to consider is our maximum level of freedom. Currently our maximum level of freedom is based on how much money we have. The estimated number of millionaires in the world, (people with a good deal, but far from limitless amount of freedom) is 10,000,000 which is only 0.15% of the worlds population. Is this the best system we should be basing our freedom off? One that only provides a good deal of freedom to 0.15% of the world?

So how can we do better?

What if instead our freedom was not limited by money, but instead limited by the state of our technological advancements and the resources of the earth. What if the freedom to eat was not based off of how much money a person had, but instead how much food the combined efforts of the world could produce through advanced technologies? What if the freedom to travel was not based off money but instead how many automated renewable energy transportation systems we could create?

This is just a vague unexplained surface scratch of the ideas this train of thought produces, but the rest is far beyond the scope of this article. One thing we can see is that instead of our freedom being based off of money and the growing debts that are plaguing the system, if our freedom was based off of advances in technology and science it would always be growing and evolving. Essentially all people on the planet would become more and more free as our technology improves further and further. Now that’s interesting.

The train of thought I’m referring to of that of a Resource Based Economy. An intro to these ideas can be seen here:

In-case your not buying the whole ‘we are kind of slaves’ thing, here is another interesting perspective about the idea of how we are not very free:

Near the middle of June, I returned home to Canada after 1 year and 9 months in China for a nice Canadian summer vacation.

I really wanted to refresh my mind with the familiar after spending so much time in such a different culture, and I really wanted to see my family and friends again.

Coming home again was a strange experience. They call it reverse culture shock, but for me it was so much shocking as it was just strange. Coming home was exciting in some ways and unsettling in others. The whole experience of coming home didn’t feel real at first. The best way to describe it was that I constantly felt like I was dreaming and that any second I would wake up and be back in China.

China had become my reality, and Canada, although familiar, felt different. The empty streets, the wide open spaces, the nature, the peaceful residential areas… it all felt a little bit new to me. I definitely appreciated certain things before that I had never really cared about while in China. I was dazzled by how nice the neighbourhood around my house looked. I noticed how many more birds and squirrels and stuff were around. For the first time I could understand the conversations of strangers, and the small talk from the people around me we’re talking about became very interesting.

Going into a store felt really strange… I could talk to the cashier in English fluently… She would treat me just like anyone else… It was completely normal but felt really special.

My home town is full of many cultures and it was cool to see so many different looking people in the same area… In China most people look very similar. People seemed much heavier as well as Chinese people are nearly all super skinny.

Going down to Toronto I was so intrigued by all the interesting looking people with tattoos and dyed hair and piercings and alternative fashions I wanted to talk to all of them just to see what they were about.

Seeing my family and friends was really nice… most of them stayed exactly the same, but some had changed in pretty big ways. The question I got from everyone ‘how was China’ always felt so impossible to answer. I knew from my time in Thailand that I would never be able to pass on my experiences in China to anyone else… telling stories about China pass on no more of my experiences than hearing news reports pass on the experience of the events.

Coming home, besides giving me a greater appreciation of Canada actually gave me a greater appreciation of China as well. Running into situations like a needing to go to a beer store… or getting a fishing licence or fire permit… or dealing with bouncers at clubs… and the vast space between everything making cars almost a necessity… or not being able to walk out of my house at 1am and find something to eat or drink… all made me appreciate the convenience and casualness of China a lot more. Canada has so many rules and regulations and restrictions and social expectations and… well these things just don’t exist in China… I told many friends to their surprise that so called communist China feels a lot more free to me than Canada.

After about 3 weeks all the strangeness of Canada began to disappear. Canada became my reality again, and now China seemed like a dream. I caught up with all my friends and family, ate all the foods I missed, did the things I hadn’t done in years… Then really just enjoyed my vacation while it lasted. I tried not to spend any money whenever possible because of how expensive everything is in Canada, and still ended up spending way more money than I would have liked. I cringe on the inside every time I have to share a $15 pitcher of beer as my mind compares it to the 10-cent beers that I had while in Aojiang or the 90-cent pints we used to get at the bar in Shunde.

I spent hours and hours on youtube relishing the freedom of unblocked youtube videos… and am happy that after 2 years of not having access to it, I now only use facebook about 10% of the time that I used to.

People say I pronounce some words with an accent now… I don’t really notice it.

I decided to really improve my Mandarin during the summer, so I began studying a few hours a day on it. This makes the idea of going back to China much more exciting as it will open up a lot more possibilities for me.

People have asked me how I’ve changed the most since before and after my trip… but I’ve had a little trouble answering it. The changes from my perspective have happened gradually and its hard for me to really remember exactly what I was like before I left. I’m sure if I could teleport my mind between the pre and post China Devin the difference would be pretty staggering. I think if I tried to some it up into a few points I would say.

• I’m far more confident. I care what other people think about me a lot less than I used to.
• I totally embrace all the strange things about myself now, and have little interest in normal people.
• I’m far more educated and interested in world issues. Understanding human behaviour and the workings of society is really interesting to me. I question everything now and try to get a root understanding of it all.
• I feel more easily frustrated with other people and the way they think and act in (from my perspective) detrimental ways.
• I approach things from a much more scientific logical mentality than I used to.
• I value unique people a lot more
• I’m into many new types of music and lost interested in some of my old favourites.
• I now know I can never go back to a typical 9-5 job.
• I try to remove all aspects of my culture from who I am and instead just look at logic and reality and what works and what makes people happy.
• I’m no longer sure if I ever want to get married.
• I think I also feel the heaviness of the world a lot more strongly now.
• I have better social skills, and more interest/enthusiasm in social interactions. I really enjoy a good deep discussion with people.
• I try to cut through all the BS out there and live in really authentic honest ways. I’d rather be honest with someone and have them not like me than keep my feelings to myself.
• I’m a lot less patriotic and a lot less into following sports.
• I have a bigger appreciation for the simple things, playing volleyball with friends, sitting around a campfire with a nice drink, walking at night, looking at the stars, and stuff like that.

I think that’s about it.

Looking back on China I feel a lot of strange feelings about it. While I was in China I lived for an extended period of time in 5 different places… plus the countless travel experiences. In each one of these places I did different things for money, had different friends a different environment and different experiences… It really feels like I lived 5 or more different lives while in China… and now that I’m back in Canada looking back on them all is a bit of a mind trip. In each new place you settle into, it becomes your new reality. Your mind adapts to it and it is your new situation and the you inside that situation is the new you. Sure we have memories that link it all together… but the feeling of each place, seems to be lost after each time you go somewhere new… That feeling only comes back to me if I smell a certain smell or hear a certain song that I strongly associate with each place, and it only comes back for a moment. It’s hard to explain and maybe needs to be experienced to be understood. I wonder how many different lives most people live… how often they just pack up and move across country away from their homes… maybe in these 2 years I experiences as many different lives as some people do in their entire lifetime? Now that each of these lives are over and I’m back in Canada, trying to remember them makes each one of them feel kind of unreal… Did they really happen? Of course they did I have pictures, and friends and blog posts… but besides these little mementos what is really left? I don’t expect others to understand the strangeness of it… but writing about it makes me feel better.

I lived mostly out of my backpack in China and the freedom was wonderful. I wonder how many different lives I will live this time I leave my home.

It’s been 2 and a half months now since I’ve been home. A part of me is really eager to go back, and a part of me wants to stay in Canada and hang out with my friends forever and give up the whole crazy idea of making it in another country again…

…ya right!

We all know which part of me will win

My flight is booked for Sep. 26th

Like anyone, sometimes I can get a little down.

Sometimes there’s a good reason for it, and sometimes there isn’t. The real question is, what should you do about it? If its a situation that you can take some sort of action to fix, then go for it, take action, make some changes. Other times it’s not so simple, maybe there’s nothing you can do about your situation, and perhaps you don’t even know why your feeling down in the first place.

That was the case with me the other day. I was feeling down for no good reason, I didn’t really know why, and I didn’t really care. I just felt mildly depressed, and the truth is I didn’t even feel like cheering myself up. For some reason it felt as if wallowing in my blue feeling was the only thing that I should do. Logically I knew I could probably cheer myself up but it was almost as if I didn’t even want to feel better.

I think these are the times when your emotions kind of feel like a drug. You feel addicted to them and you don’t really want them to go away even though you know the alternative is better. So there I sat on some stairs in Guilin, with my head resting on my fist, looking out into the world I wasn’t happy in, feeling miserable.

Just at that time an old lady walked up to me with a huge heavy looking bag over her shoulder. She had a back problem and was bent over at the waist, almost at a 90-degree angle and walked slowly under the weight of what she carried. While I should have thought something along the lines of “well at least I have my health to be happy about, not like this poor woman” instead my thoughts said “oh great, here comes an annoying beggar to bother me for money.”

The lady walked up to me and held out her hand, and just as I was about to turn away I noticed that she simply wanted to collect the empty water bottle I was holding. She was one of the ladies that made their away around town collecting hundreds of plastic bottles in order to trade them in for enough to get by. I handed the bottle to her and expected her to then ask me for some change, but she didn’t, and instead she thanked me twice… and with a really sincere, appreciative look in her eyes and walked away.

I felt a stroke of admiration, this lady has serious health problems, but instead of sitting down on the street and begging for money like so many others in China she trucks on, and carries heavy bags of what she collects around the city, working for herself to get by. I sat there a little stunned as I watched the lady slowly walk away carrying her heavy load with her.

“I want to do something nice for this lady,” I thought.

She put her bags down next to a building and hobbled down the street looking for more bottles to collect. I realized if I wanted to make this woman happy I couldn’t just go give her some money, as she might feel insulted since she works hard for every penny she gets without being a beggar. Instead I had to think of a way to give her what she needed without her knowing she received any charity. I formulated my plan.

I waited for the lady to enter a small ally before I made my move. I sneaked over to where her heavy bags were and took some money out of my wallet. I lifted up the corner of one of her bags and slid the money underneath, and ran back to the stairs before being seen.

For the next 10 minutes I sat there with absolute focus waiting for the lady to return. My mind was clear of everything as I waited in excited anticipation. Eventually she made her way back to the bags. I stood up with excitement ready to see if she would find the money or not. I went behind a pillar for a better view. After 1 more minute of resting she picked up her heavy bags, then stopped. She reached down and grabbed the money I had hidden, and although her faced was turned away from me and I couldn’t see her, I imagined a big *lucky* smile shine upon her face.

The lady had found more money in that lucky second than she would likely find all day. I imagined the rest of her day would be easier. Her bags wouldn’t feel so heavy, there would be a lightness in her step because she had luckily stumbled upon some money. It must have felt like the universe was smiling on her. I felt great.

I would never see that woman again,  never receive her thanks, or even see her smile but it didn’t matter. I felt like I did something good for someone less fortunate than me, and it didn’t contain any of the usual gratitude, which surprisingly made it feel really really good! The depression I felt earlier in the day was a faded memory. I was refreshed and renewed, the rest of my day felt sunny.

So there you have it. When your feeling down, instead of trying to make yourself feel better, which can be difficult or which can even feel undesirable… instead make someone else feel good. Help cheer someone else up, or help someone that needs you. Lending a hand to someone less fortunate than you can give you a wonderful feeling, and if you make it into a fun event like I did it can completely lift your spirits.

Until next time, feel good!

Recently I’ve had the absolute privilege of checking out one of the most amazing places I have ever been in the world.

The Guilin Rice Terraces.

The Guilin Rice Terraces

My girlfriend Jen’s mom decided to take us on an awesome trip to see the terraces in a small town that was about an hours drive from Guilin.

After driving on a windy mountain road for a long time we reached the base of the village where we were approached by a bunch of girls with turbins and huge baskets on their backs.

The baskets on their backs are used to carry heavy things up the mountains

Upon closer inspection however I noticed they weren’t wearing turbins, but instead had incredibly long hair! In this village the tradition is that the longer a woman’s hair, the more beautiful and worthy she is for marriage.

Brushing her hair our of the window

2 of the older village girls showing off their hair with us

Next we did the long hike into the village which was tiring with all of our heavy bags. When we reached the top however, to the little guest house on the mountain that we would be staying in, we were all blown away by the absolute beauty!

The view!

These terraces are used for growing rice, and have this distinct shape to make them efficient for watering (and also to allow the rice to be planted in such a remote location) each level of the terrace is flooded with water which trickles down to the layer below and to the layer below giving all of the rice on the mountain an even level of water. You can see a guy working on the field here:

Working hard on the rice fields

The entire experience was really nice. It was great to simply be secluded from the city, surrounded by mountains in all direction. Even just breathing the fresh air was incredibly refreshing to my system after spending so much time locked to my computer working on T-Shirt Design World.

The people of the village were very friendly and took wonderful care of us. The entire trip and guest house room was also incredibly cheap, as a single night was only 80rmb ($12.30). The food was wonderful, they had some really unique and delicious rice wine, and simply standing on the balcony and looking out at the marvel the rice terraces were, which must have been crafted into the mountains over generations… was truly phenomenal.

After visiting these rice fields, I officially declare Guilin my favorite travel destination in China. Not only does Guilin have these rice fields, they also have the amazing mountains and rivers of Yangshuo, Stunning caves, waterfalls, white water rafting, and so much more to see and do. It really is one of the most beautiful destinations on earth.

In my usual fashion I’ll leave you all with a slide show!

I have to apologize for the lack of updates to this blog, but for the last couples of months I have been working diligently on creating my new business!, and when I say diligently I really mean diligently!.. and have been putting in about an average of 10-12 hour work days nearly every day.

All the work however has produced a result that I am rather proud of, so I am excited to share (drum roll please)

T-Shirt Design World . com

T-Shirt Design World is a t-shirt website with a unique angle. It’s about bringing together only the highest quality designs, made by artists who come from many different countries from around the world, with really affordable prices.

Right now at the time of launch all of our tees are $7-$10 and we already have 11 designers from 6 different countries!

The cool thing about having different designers from different countries is that you get a lot of different styles. Already T-Shirt Design World has cute silly tees, funny creative shirts, colorful bright t-shirts, cool stylish designs, and more.

Designers

How it works for our designers is that we pay them 40% of the profit for each shirt of theirs that we sell. When a designer is interested in joining we have him send us at least 5 samples of his work. If our T-Shirt judges approve at least 5 of them then we create a store page for them, with cool banners showing their style, and make their tees available for sale.

Check out our Design 4 Us page to learn more.

The Future

As with all new companies we expect the beginning of our store to start slow, but we hope to see continuous growth into the future. We have tons and tons of plans for how to make the store better and we will be working constantly to see it expand.

We hope to get designers from most countries of the world, and become the authority when it comes to finding interesting tees made from the people of the earth.

I personally also have a future vision for the website that is unfortunately too early to act out… and that is to have the website, once it is more successful, act as a sort of service to humanity. My future plans involve donating a percentage of all money made to help set up ‘sustainable future’ projects in the individual countries that the designers of the shirt come from.

This can be something as simple as, for example: 20% of all profit from t-shirt stores represented by Indonesian designers will go to a project of installing a windmill to help power an Indonesian orphanage.

While this example is a small one, it is a realistic one… and while the energy generated by a single windmill will not make much of a difference, the point is to raise awareness of the worlds needs to move towards implementing renewable, sustainable technologies.

Check us out!

Anyway, enough talk! I’ll go ahead and post a slideshow showing different collages created using some designs from each artist.

or you can simply view the main website here

and if your a facebook junkie, View and ‘like’ our facebook page here!

here’s the slideshow:

take care!

Recently Jen and I have opened up our home to couch surfers.

Couch-surfing is a worldwide network of travelers who open up their homes for (or sometimes just meet for a drink) with other travelers. If you haven’t seen it before you should check it out!

We’ve had some great people stay with us, and one particularly interesting one was a Chinese man named Marvin whos stop at our place was part of his year long bike trip around China!

Marvin’s been on the road for over 5 months now, and has tons of great experiences around China. He gave me the pleasure of giving him this interview for this talking to travelers series:

Marvin and his bike

In fact, at the beginning I was the type to follow the common Chinese life style. I was more reserved and not so outgoing. However in college I started to listen to rock music on the  radio, then once I heard <Where did you sleep last night> by Nirvana, I started to change. I also had some friends who loved art and shared the same interests with me. We often talked about travel and the western music. So it started from music, then I gradually got to know about other aspects, which guided me in knowing what kind of life I wanted.

So after graduation, I left my hometown, and worked in Dalian for a year. At that time, I provided couch surfing for others many times. I heard their stories and experience, so it inspired me to get out there and look around for myself. Later I started to try many different jobs in different cities which began my travels.

Making it to Lasa (The Capital City of Tibet) has always been my dream. At the beginning I planned to travel there by bus. But the expenses are very high. So instead I found another way to travel there— by riding my bicycle.  My habit is that when I have an idea, I will act on it, and let the experience of trying teach me how. I found that sometimes when we think too hard about something, in the end we will talk ourselves out of it. It’s better just to act on our inspired ideas.

On the way I learned lots of things that I never had chance to learn before. It was more interesting than living in the city. But I also think about my parents when I travel for such a long time, so I decided that I will take a 1 year long trip, then after that, I will make money and help to give my family a better quality life. After that, I will travel again.

To save money, I try to stay with couch surfers. When I find locals willing to help, I can not only make lots of friends, but can also learn more about local cultures and customs.

On the way, I met man different people, experienced man different things and shared many different ideas. I see it as a kind of study. Also, I have enough time to think about it all on the way. The whole couch surfing experience really makes my trip rewarding.

1. Help

Every day is new and new problems always arise. However sometimes I find strangers willing to help me. I feel grateful for this so I try to give a hand to others when they need it as well.
2. Perspective.

I’ve learned that in this world, there are many more good people than bad people. Chinese education always teaches us that bad people are everywhere. However if you experience the world for yourself, you will know the truth.

3. Communication.

On the way I have met so many people that helped me. So it’s been necessary to learn how to communicate in a proper way, because couch surfing is not merely living in hotels.

4. Less complaining.

Rather than complaining, it is better to save energy for the trip!

Loneliness

This loneliness is not only about being alone during the journey but really the hardest part is that no many people can support and understand it. Therefore I have to become stronger without caring about other people’s opinions.
I am the owner of my life. I am the leader. So only I can feel and understand. Others are just the audience.

I’ve learned to appreciate, and learned to understand.

Some philosophies I’ve discovered while biking that can be applied to life follow:

“The harder it is to reach the top of the hill, the more you can relax as you coast down it. But please be careful about your speed.

When you are going downhill or uphill, you can not relax. But when you face these hills, it will challenge your limitations.

You will never know what is behind the next turn, the only way to know is to go forward and check.

When things get rough, hold on for one more second… you will see the first rays of sunrise.

Never mind what people will say, only your can feel your experiences, so only you have the right to say judge them.

There is always something that triggers the pieces of your memory.

Life is like the accelerator, you can set the speed of the ride.

We run to chase the setting sun, while only a little heat remains. Although we know that this little heat is not hot enough to warm our body, but just a little light can ignite our hearts when the darkness comes.

If you don’t love yourself, don’t expect others love you.

What you want is always more than what you achieve.

Taking picture is nothing to do with the camera. The key is if your eyes know how to catch beauty. This pair of eyes is in your heart.

Time is the best truth. So close your eyes and judge with your mind.

If you smile to the mirror, the mirror will smile to you.

When you watch the view from far, you see the mountains are there, the scenery is there. When you go closer you see, the mountain is still there but greater. When you go too close, you wonder where is the mountain?

It is the same with love.”

Everyday when I arrive at new destinations, they are all my best moments.

Chatting, cooking and parting with couch surfers and sharing my stories and pictures with my friends.

Thanks for the great interview Marvin! We can all learn from the philosophies you have discovered during your travels. We wish you the best of luck continuing your journey to Tibet!