Week 5: “Why Leave the House?”

Its been 36 days, 9 hours, and 21 minutes since I touched down in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and started my summer adventure here. This week I want to address a question the explorer Ben Saunders raises in a TED Talk he gave in 2012 that I posted to Facebook back in November: “If it is being done somewhere by someone, and we can participate virtually, then why bother leaving the house?”. I’d encourage you to take a few minutes and listen to Ben’s talk below:

As I listened to Ben’s TED talk again, I found remarkable parallels between my time here in Haiti and the time Ben spent in the polar circle. We both chose to take 10 weeks and travel to a physically taxing and (potentially) dangerous place for the sake of chasing a dream. Some people questioned our decisions, and both of our mothers were slightly concerned. Given these parallels, it may come as no surprise that I find Ben’s answer to the question “Why leave the house?” to be spot on:

“I can try to tell you what it was like, but you’ll never know what it was like. The more I try to explain that I felt lonely (I was the only human being in 5.4 million square miles), that it was cold (nearly -75 Celsius with wind chill on a bad day), the more words fall short and I’m unable to do it justice. And it seems to me that the doing, to try, to experience, to engage, to endeavor, rather than to watch and to wonder, that’s where the real meat of life is, the juice we can suck out of our hours and days.”

Ben Saunders

I try my best through this blog to describe what I’m experiencing and thinking down here, but the unfortunate reality is that its impossible to convey the full experience. I can’t sit you down next to me in the back of the pickup truck I was in yesterday and make you smell and taste and hear the experience.

“The unfortunate reality is that its impossible to convey the full experience.”

I can explain to you the smells of the exhaust and burning trash and the sound of Tap-taps honking and merchants bartering on the sidewalks as you drive through the winding roads, and I can show you photos of life unraveling on a Sunday afternoon as families walk back home after church and street vendors are out in full force fighting to capture your attention. What I can’t adequately describe is how amazing it feels to escape the heat of the city after a long hot week, and the joy of feeling the rush of cool air hitting your face as you climb ever higher and higher into the mountains to the south of Port-au-Prince.

I can’t stand you next to me on the mountaintop we climbed yesterday and have you experience the breathtaking beauty of the mountains and valleys. Pixels on a screen are tantalizing, and words help form a picture in your mind’s eye, but its still not the same as being there. You feel on top of the world as you look across the undulating green hills, spotting the occasional  house of a rural farmer dotting the hillside and seeing the terraced planting beds they’ve set up to grow corn, carrots, and other vegetables. The air is filled with the sounds of  goats, chickens, and pigs as we descend deeper and deeper into the yawning mouth of the valley.

I can show you a picture of the friendly Haitians we met  listening to music after a catholic mass deeper in the valley. But I can’t bring that music to life through words, nor communicate the hospitality or kindness of these souls, nor their indomitable human spirit in the face of the adversity and hardship they face in the rural countryside of Haiti.

And I can’t describe the feeling of being sick as you walk back up those mountains, after 5 hours under the beating sun. The guttural feeling of being exhausted, wildly dehydrated and nauseated goes beyond words, as does the almost primal instinct to find shade to sit down in and cool off. The experience of climbing hundreds of vertical feet with the taste of bile still fresh in your mouth is tough to articulate, and the sound of your body screaming for even just an ounce of cold, crisp water is something that can only be understood through experience…

But that is exactly why you leave the house. I wouldn’t trade any part of my day — not even the hellish return journey from down in the valley– for anything, because I know that I found the real meat of life. My hours were lived fully and lived well, and that is a joy that cannot be matched, even if the moment was filled with physical pain and suffering (I’m feeling better now after a lot of water and some rest!).

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The subtle truth embedded in Ben Saunders’ talk is that you don’t leave the house so you can be happy or comfortable. Quite the opposite, by all accounts you leave the house to face more difficulties and hardships. The point is that these hardships are what make life worth living. Taking a look back at Ben Saunders’ story, he voluntarily placed himself in a position to be by himself for 10 weeks, live out of a one-man tent, and be perpetually exhausted from hauling 400 lbs of equipment across hundreds of miles of frozen ocean… and then he choose to do it all over again as quickly as possible! That type of behavior goes against all conventional wisdom, and yet the desire to “try, to experience, to engage, to endeavor, rather than to watch and to wonder” urges all of us to pack our bags, lace up our shoes, and embrace the hardships in search of fullness and meaning.

One of the most poignant parts of Ben’s talk when I watched it for a second time yesterday was when he said “there’s something very addictive about tasting life at the very edge of what’s humanly possible… and in my case polar explorations are perhaps not that far removed from having a crack habit. I can’t explain quite how good it is until you’ve tried it, and it has the capacity to burn up all the money I can get my hands on, to ruin every relationship I’ve ever had… so be careful what you wish for.”

Therein lies the difficulty of all of this. Deep down I know that when I go home, after some time to rest and recover, I’m going to be as anxious as ever to start traveling again and embrace the kind of life I’m living here where I come to terms with my limits every day. I’m lucky to have another adventure waiting for me in Cameroon come September 1st, but its a difficult thing to know that tension exists. I hope and pray that I can find balance in my life so that I’ll be grounded in a reality that offers me that challenge rather than perpetually chasing after the next adventure that lies just beyond my reach… One step at a time though. I know I am where I need to be right now, and I plan on being as present as possible for the adventure I’m living.

– Aaron D

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