The days are slowing as we get closer and closer to our departure. Everything has been ready since I came back to Olympia from my hometown of Sequim after working my a** off the past 2 weeks. It’s all good though, de Botton says “The key ingredients of happiness are not material but stubbornly psychological.” So really, if i’m happy or not, it’ll all just be in my head anyway. He also said that “the beach initiates the feeling of happiness…”. Im being teased by happiness, while I work to make money so that I maintain my happiness in California, but really, I’m just going to decide if I’m happy or not while I’m there which I probably will because i’ll be at the beach.
In The Art of Travel there were been two things that have led humans on their journey. The first being the search for happiness. I haven’t played with that idea before. I’ve been thinking that this trip will give me the most things to experience: the most time, the most connections, the best setting, the homies, the ease of travel and comfortability, I guess I hadn’t really thought “will it make me happy?” de Botton wrote about how Xavier de Maistre went on a journey around his room and had as enjoyable a time as any. Our perception of things, and I don’t mean if we look- what we see, but the feeling we get about what we experience is what births thought. Regardless of circumstance we, as humans, are going to have an opinion about everything that we experience. The phrase by the author, “Journeys are the midwives of thought”, suggest that we are going to have a jaded view of things if we just get used to seeing what we see everyday. We’ll have our experience, we’ll give our two cents about it and that will be that. But if we allow ourselves to adventure and to go beyond, these actions are going to guide our thoughts, and if we are always on the search for happiness, guide them to allow all moments to be happy. This is why Humboldt says there is importance in “having the right question for the world”. It is our mindset that will decide where and what and who we see on our search for happiness because its the variable that changes, and the variable we control. With the right question i can be lead to the right answers.
The second thing Alain de Botton brought up in The Art of Travel was that “humans desire to possess beauty” by understanding it, and the “only way to understand it is to express it through art.” This book flows nicely with the way my thoughts are evolving on the matter of this trip. I am searching for happiness on this trip. I’m looking for ways this trip can help me to be successful. I know that people have been successful in this place by being inspired by the beauty of the city, the beach, the people. They captured that beauty and represented it through art, art that I have experienced again and again. From pt. 3 On Art the author says “Works of art influence us in where we want to travel.” I think this is very accurate especially in regards to the music I listen to. My first album I purchased was The Young and the Hopeless by Good Charlotte (LA) and the last album I purchased was To Pimp a Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar (LA). Not to mention all the albums in between which of my 124, I would say, 40 at least are Southern California. But now its my turn. I wish to be inspired like so many before me and to allow myself to express the beauty in the this place through art. Ive learned in the past year how to “not draw but see” the world I am experiencing through sketching and composing. They are the areas where I can be the most creative and expressive.
Entering into this next chapter of my life it will be important for me to be aware. As this Journey unfolds I need to remember the things I have learned from this book. starting first and foremost with mindset. A positive mindset will lead a positive life. On my search for happiness, success and beauty, the only thing that can hinder me will be myself. The fight will come like it always does, but it is important to have the right question of the world and the journey will guide me through the caves and over the mountains of this thought process like midwives.
Your art is to be the praise of what you love.