This past weekend, with the supreme power granted unto me by the possession of an international driver’s permit–available from your local AAA office–I, along with several others, took a fairly lengthy road trip across Bulgaria, in total covering nearly 1,000 kilometers. Our main destinations were the Veliko Tyrnovo and Shumen provinces, both containing numerous sites of archaeological interest.
The day after visiting the ruins of Nicopolis ad Istrum, the unearthed remains of an old Roman city founded by Trajan, we worked our way to what were, in my mind, two of the top places in Bulgaria that I absolutely could not miss without feeling a sore sense of dissatisfaction with myself and with my lack of a hands-on view of this country’s history. These two places were Pliska and Preslav, the former capitals of the First Bulgarian Empire (681-1018 CE).
I had built up some high expectations of my visits to these places, not in small part due to a fairly romanticized film* I had watched about the creation of the Bulgarian people and the conversion to Christianity, as a national identity, at Pliska and Preslav. They were not disappointments by any means. It is simply strange to walk along the bare foundations of what were once magnificent, important palaces and churches, especially when one knows the history behind what one is seeing and standing upon; this feeling is hard to come by back home, where an “old” building is merely a hundred years old. So long ago, Preslav was the center of Slavic learning and culture, and the Tsars residing there challenged, and often defeated, their mighty neighbor, the Eastern Roman Empire.
The signs and museum will explain to you that this city of former glory was destroyed by several attacks, and over time lost its important position. Still, this explanation somehow misses something, somehow does not suffice for me. Merely the surface is scratched. I think about the people who ruled here, who lived here.
What else should they have done?
During the trip, I had begun to fall ill, and so when I returned the rental car in Sofia, I decided to simply spend the night there with a friend and see if I felt better in the morning.
Naturally, our first stop was at a pharmacy, to try to stem whatever symptoms I could until I could see a full doctor the next morning. Afterwards, however, given the typical chilliness of the Sofian plain and my illness, we decided to head to a lovely tea house before dinner, where I had a pot of so-called “Assam” tea.
Naturally, discussion shifts to something my friend has on her mind. “I brought work with me to do during our lazy hours of the weekend,” she says, “but of course I got none of it done. And, given how much stuff we were doing, when would I have had time?”
“Yeah,” I agree.
“I mean, we were taking a trip. What else should I have done?”
“Nothing else.” We sip our tea.
We then launch into the struggle we face with the perennial question of what else we should be doing. In this case, that struggle is, namely, procrastination.
“I’ll have a task in mind, but then I think, ‘Oh, let me check this website, or get this other thing done.’ And then, three more things pop up, and by the time I’m done with small thing number four, it’s almost impossible for me to get started on the original task at hand.”
I empathize completely, recounting the countless hours spent on the internet looking at pictures of cats or other equally meaningless and mediocre things.
“Why do we do this?”
“Anxiety or something, I suppose.” And it’s true. There’s also just something addictive about scrolling through image after image or factoid after factoid. In some immediate way, it’s better than working on something at which we are struggling, or afraid of failing at in the end.
She pulls out her phone, and says, “Reminds me of one of my favorite poems by Mary Oliver,” thrusting in my direction that strange glowing box with little words written on it.
The Summer Day
Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean- the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down- who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away. I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
What else should I have done, indeed?
“So,” I ask, “how do we fix this problem, exactly?” And what a problem it is. My thoughts immediately turned to Tyler Durden, a character from Fight Club which–partially motivated by having been teased by my mentor professor for conducting a study on masculinity without having watched this iconic film–I had watched for the first time only a week before. Durden, simply, can be seen as the epitome of a man’s dream to live life to the fullest in some way, even if those dreams are quite distorted. The point is: what is stopping us from being Tyler Durden? What keeps us from being who we want to be?
“Well,” my friend begins, “I think the key might have to do with being engaged in something.”
“Do you mean, like, aware of what you’re doing?”
“Maybe, something like that. Mindful.”
Remembering my location and what’s in front of me, I take a sip of tea, because what else should I have done? It smells and tastes like any other Indian tea I’ve had before.
Surely, this must be on the right track. Who would spend their entire life browsing pictures of cats on the internet unless they were ignorant or fundamentally unengaged in some way?
Gears turn in my head. I try to think of times when I’ve been more “engaged,” less likely to absentmindedly hop from page to page, re-watch a video I’ve already seen myriad times, or distract myself from something more pressing.
I think back to the weekend I just had. Not a lot of those things going on there. Then, it comes to me. It’s so simple. Travel.
Never will I be tempted to browse Reddit on my phone while I’m out exploring Tallinn, nor will I idly refresh Facebook when hiking Vitosha. I already knew that I have travelled a lot these past few months, but I did not look deeply into why, and thanks to this conversation, I looked, and I found this: because travel engages me. It grants me the opportunity for new sights, new tastes, new situations, new contexts, new experiences. I can learn; I can develop. It fights against the same old, same old. With travel, I can experience a more ethical bit of Durdenness.
When I travel, I can ask Mary Oliver’s question: “What else should I have done?” And when I travel, I feel like, for now, I can confidently reply:
“Nothing else.”
I relate to my friend my introspective revelation. “Travel is one of those engaging things. For me, at least.”
“Right,” she agrees.
Yet, at the same time, we concur, maybe the expectation that we make our one wild and precious life indeed wild was somehow mistaken or unfounded.
I say, “I think Tyler Durden sort of epitomizes that way of thinking. Rebelling against the status quo and limitations on our lives. It can be easy to identify with him.”
“Besides all the distortions in thinking that he represents,” she retorts.
“Oh, naturally. But since so many fans of the film take him as this hero and role model, it’s impossible to deny that there is something appealing about him, about being him. Hell, the whole film is about imagining what it’s like to be him. There’s something social going on that makes him appealing in some way.” Perhaps Durden represents value-based rationality, where decisions are made towards achievement of some ideal or standard; Durden, of course, by my loose and on-the-fly application of Weberian thought, lives surrounded by a society more largely based on instrumental-based rationality, where micro-level and merely economic considerations like monetary profit and comfort dominate. This form dissociates people from meaning in their lives, and so they turn to Durden to reject instrumental rationality and bring back meaning and a more cohesive, authentic social order.
In any case, Durden’s cult appeal is, in my mind, linked to the phenomenon of internet procrastination and addiction in some way. I explain this to my friend, also adding in the ideal that we should all be heroes.
“No one daydreams about going home and sitting hunched over in front of a computer all day. They want to be in The Hobbit, or in The Lord of the Rings.”
“True,” she says. “But also, keep in mind, those ‘heroes’ usually dream of a quiet, peaceful, uneventful life back home.”
“True,” I say.
“After all, a hero can still ask himself,
What else should I have done?”
Post-Communist Colby 