"...See you around!"

One way or another we all come back, eh? All we need is a break from it all? A breather? This is after all the real world, isn't it? The natural order of things, right? We have to be realistic, don't we? Dreams are dreams and can only be perceived as such, right? This is it, isn't it? Why even bother? I mean, we can't really do anything about our situation now, can we? It's just a phase, will soon pass, won't it?
I have full respect for people who wish for my return and when they start to make plans for when I come back. I can understand it. I even understand those who continuously tell me that I will come back, that we all need a break every once in a while. That I will most likely fail in whatever I try to do. That I am crazy and brave. But that I will fail and come back.
Wanna know a secret? Promise not to tell anyone? Promise!!
Ok, here we go:

I DON'T WANT TO COME BACK!

I hate this way of life. I cannot possibly go back to being a wage slave again once I've managed to escape that life. Trust me, I will do whatever I can to prevent it from happening. Perhaps one day I will come back to Scandinavia and live here, but not the same way. Not ever again. To all of you who keep saying that I will return, that I will fail and give up: Is it your own fear speaking? I know it is. Are you simply jealous? I know you are. Do you wish that you could do the same? I know you do, and you can. Perhaps I might fail, perhaps times will get rough, and they will, oh yes they will, same way things will go well, it's called "the natural balance of life". Will I want to give up and go back to this world of "safety"? Perhaps.
I've come a long way already. I've gone through a lot of changes(internal as external) in order to do this. I've worked hard for this. Most importantly, i've been dreaming about this my whole life. And now finally i'm at the threshold. I will not give up. I'd rather spend the rest of my life on the road, free, happy and in control of my life, than to go back to a life of corporate slavery just to feel "safe". One thing I can promise, if I do come back to become a wage slave again, suicide won't be far off. This I know. I want to live, that's why i'm doing this in the first place. To live my life. To see what's out there.

I'll round this one off with a well known quote from a very wise man, Jiddu Krishnamurti, a man who knew what life is about, that living one's life is more important than any record album, any car, any partner, any job, any house etc.

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."

See you around!

"Hiraeth"

Ever had a feeling that no matter how many friends you're surrounded by, you are alone? When at a party or a dinner, you notice all your friends having a laugh, drinking, fighting over wich songs to put on, smiling at eachother. You notice their joy, but you cannot share it. Even though you smile back when a smile is directed towards you, or someone is cheering their beer at you, you cheer back. But there is no happiness in that smile of yours, no real joy in that cheer. You feel all alone, with your thoughts drifting away somewhere else, you know that there is something else out there, another place, another way of life. You have a constant feeling that all this is fake. Ever had that? Ofcourse you have.

Some people call this feeling a "quarter-crisis" or a "mid-crisis", when we start to ponder over the fact that we're growing old, we're about to die, we haven't achieved what we're supposed to, we have failed to answer the obligations of "our" society. You simply walk around with a feeling that everything around you is wrong. But you cannot really say what it is. More than often you might find yourself peering towards the distance, with a great longing in your heart, you want to do something, you feel that there is something else out there for you, but you can't let go. You can't leave. You'll lose friends, You'll lose your job, your home, your social security(if you're on the dole), you'll lose your "status", your band, your partner, your pet or whatever. There is always a reason not to let go.Why should you be unhappy? You've got your job, your stuff, your partner, your pet, your friends, your home. But still there is something that tells you that all this is wrong.
The ancient Celts(the Cymraeg/Welsh to be exact) call this feeling "hiraeth", it's more or less impossible to translate properly, but it kinda means that all humans have a deep longing for something, call it a sense of being homesick, but it's not even that, but something similar. We all feel that we have something else that we wish to do. That there is something else out there. Several ancient cultures, or mythologies call that feeling a "calling".

But in this society we can remedy this feeling. For a price ofcourse. If you ever have this "crisis" you can read books, or attend a course(or two) that will make you accept your situation for what it is, so you don't walk around having unrealistic dreams and hopes. We have psychologists("shrinks"), we have anti-depressives, we have alcohol and we have drugs. No need to "heed the call" so to speak when we've got all that to numben our "crisis".  I mean, we have obligations, things we have to do, we have to pay taxes, we have to work, we have to study, just imagine what would happen to this society if everyone would listen to their dreams and start reclaiming their lives? There is oil to be drilled, fish to be caught, forests to be cut down, wool to be collected, technology to be researched, money to be made. We have to get richer!

We have to make life more comfortable!

This society, in my opinion, is designed to make us forget who we really are. Trust me, and most of you out there knows this as well, we are not meant to live like this. All throughout human history, mankind has been wanderers, seekers, nomads exploring the earth. We have a free will of our own, minds to think with. But we are lead to believe that all we need in our lives is to be comfortable. Everything needs to be easy.
I mean, sure we can demonstrate on the streets, showing our contempt towards "our" governments, we can fight the police during riots. But at the end of the day, most people wanna be able to go home, to their TV's(so they can hopefully spot themselves on the news), their videogames, their computers, their sodas, their beers, their comfortable toilets, their pets, their plants, their ovens, their beds, their stuff, their stuff, their stuff. Why do you want a revolution when you still want to keep your comfortable life? Answer: We are literally brainwashed to act like this, no matter how free we claim to be. We have been brought up to think like this. That we need all that.
But we don't, deep inside we all feel it.

Do I have this feeling, this longing? This "hiraeth"?
Yes.
I've had it my whole life more or less. Sure, there have been periods when i've been able to forget about it, just living for the alcohol, not caring one bit about what was going on around me. At times, i've believed that if only I get that job, I will be able to live my life, I will be happy. Or if I get those record albums or those videogames. And it worked, for a short time. I was content and happy with my new stuff, my new job for about a month or two, sometimes it only took a few weeks. Then I would fall down on my butt again, thinking about my situation: "What the hell am I doing with my life, is this it?". But then I would find some other shiny thingie that would attract my eye, that could soothe this feeling for a moment. And I would go on like that, for years and years. But there was many a time when I could sit among my friends, drunk as I don't know what, not being able to share their happiness, not being able to share their laughs, not being able to enjoy the band that was playing on stage. Instead I could find myself gazing away at the distance with my thoughts, close to tears, knowing that there was something else out there, somewhere I had to be, that the life I was living was wrong, that everything around me was fake. I have always known. Even I started eating anti-depressives, thinking it would make my life better, and it did for a while, but I stopped eating them after a few months, for deep inside I know that it's not a solution. We have to open our eyes and live our lives. Alcohol, anti-depressives, drugs, tobacco, political ideologies, violence, artifical realities cannot save us or replace that feeling of longing that most of us have.

The lives most of us are living ARE FAKE.

Some of us can manage to supress this feeling pretty well and adjust themselves to living within this society of "ours". Work, eat, consume, get drunk, fuck, sleep, die. But for a price. Angst, depression, loneliness, hopelessness, forever wondering what's out there, fear, life-long medications, therapy and the list goes on and on and on.

Ever wondered why some people travel to India to "find themselves"? Ever wondered why some people decide to just "drop it all" and relocate themselves to the deep forests, to live in a cave? Ever wondered why some people one day leave everything to travel the world? Ever wondered why some people seem to have a certain "glow" in their eyes? Ever wondered why some people begin with spiritual "mumbo-jumbo", a.k.a paganism, bhuddism, shamanism, alternative religions or beliefs? Ever wondered why some people wishes to leave this society? Ever wondered why some people sneer or quietly grin at your political propaganda, or laugh in your face when you tell them that they have to do this and that?
Because they know. They know that all this around us is fake, that it is wrong. So they go out to pursue their dreams, no matter what the cost, and trust me, this society is designed so that if you do that, you are doomed to "fuck up". In this society you do not stray from the rest of the sheep without paying a high price. But these people don't care. They know that life is more than that. They know that taking risks, taking chances is part of life. Every hinder, every obstacle that stands in their way, will teach them something and they simply walk around it, climb over it, or smash right through it.
They have or are reclaiming their lives.

But what are we meant to do then? What is our "salvation"? Can we find it? Can we find life? Ofcourse we can, but we cannot find it in this society of "ours", where capitalism is the master.
I cannot tell you what we are meant to do or what you can do for yourself. Only you know what to do about your situation. Most of us know deep inside what we can do. But we must dare to let go. To let go of our prejudices, our fears, our brainwashed mentality that we "need" so much to survive. We need to let go of ourselves in order to become free, to become what we are. Humans.

Some cultures call this a "cleansing".

Reclaim your life and live, damn it, live!

Freedom.

Today's subject is "freedom". A word that is so misused and misunderstood that it almost hurts saying it. Millions have died for it, in wars, in concentration camps, in torture chambers, in dark alleys, in bedrooms etc.
And what is freedom? Does it have anything to do with democracy, or anarchism? Or any other political ideology? In my opinion, no. Do I have the right answer for what it really is? No. I can only give you my own opinion about what freedom is. The ideas about freedom are as different as there are humans on this planet. If we are to take freedom literally, the true sense of the word, we have to lock ourselves in a dark room, without ligt, without sound and sit there, unaffected by anyone or anything, that would be true freedom. But then again one would become affected by the darkness and silence and probably go mad attempting it.
Then what is freedom for me then? In my opinion: It is bliss, to be content with one's life. To wake up every morning not being weary of life, not wanting to die, not sighing the first thing you do with tears in the corner of your eyes not wanting to go on. Freedom for me is to have complete control of one's own situation, one's own life, being able to control the amount of information that flows into our heads everyday. To travel everywhere and whenever one feels like it. To not be hindered by work, by obligations, by gossip, by a broken heart, by alcohol and tobacco.
You cannot find freedom at the bottom of a bottle, nor is it explained on your payslip, nor is it televisionised and it cannot be bought on sale in a supermarket. Nor can you gain freedom for a society with a revolution, not in this day and age. All one can to today is to set oneself free and hopefully inspire others to follow. Freedom is deep inside all of us, we just have to find it and figure out what it means to us. And what we will do with it.
We were all born free and we can all die free as well.
Freedom is ours for the taking.

Life?

What is life really? I mean, can we truly define it? What is our purpose, the meaning of life? 42? Think about it, some people, a lot of people seems to be content with the fact that their lives is a never-ending circle containing work, consuming, breeding and then the inevitable death. Is that really life, or living? Working 5 days a week to earn your right in our so called society, working to be able to pay a rent we sometimes barely can afford, working 5 days a week to be able to feed ourselves and our families, to pay our bills wich comes from everything we need in life. Or do we? Do we really need all that? Do we really need video/computergames, TV, video, other high-tech machinery, magazines, TV shows that tell us what to do, what to think, how to behave, how to live our lives, perfume, beauty shops, cellphones, movies, CD's, things things things and things? What is that? Is that safety? Is it safety to not being able to sleep due to the fact that you might loose your job, is it safety that you can't sleep due to the fact that you can't afford to pay neither your bills nor your rent? Is it safety that we spend thousands upon thousands of euro/dollars[insert any currency here] on things we don't need? Is it safety knowing that you will only be able to take a vacation 4-5 weeks a year? Is it safety knowing that you will probably have to be working for the rest of your life(wich in this case means until you're about 65+- years old, not that life is necesserily ending at that age, but our youthful strength has surely vanished by then).
Is this what life is about? Oh yes, I almost forgot, we've got all the pubs around us, the beers in the supermarkets, the liquorstores so we can celebrate the upcoming weekend, how can we ever become miserable in a society like this?

Seriously, think about it.

Ever had something you wanted to do with your life? Ever had a dream that still lingers on from childhood? You feel tired all the time, no energy or lust for life? You have an "itch" that refuses to go away, you know you can remedy it somehow, but not exactly sure how? You have a constant feeling that all this is wrong, but you can't really place your thumb on it either? That there is something else out there, that a different life is possible? But you can't go, you can't do something about it? You have a job, a partner, a band, you got friends that would question you, you have somewhere to "belong" and just can't go or do something about that "itch", right? There is always an excuse to linger on. Always.

Why am I talking about this? Well i'm sick of this. And have been for quite some years. But I lingered on, I stayed, I tried to drink it away, tried to conform and adjust to my surroundings thinking that it would go away. Sometimes it did, could always find something that could make me smile for a week or two, sometimes even months. But I always fell back, became severely depressed, developed angst, stopped caring about anything. But something happened to me, I had a mental breakdown in december 2009 and thought to myself "Shit, it's either death or change from here" and I chose to change, to live.
And what kind of change am I talking about? What is this? Life?
We're not meant to live like this, in cities where we work our whole lives away, drinking our "free time" away believing that we are truly free, wich we are not. We are as caged as the animals in laboratories, only that our cages are mental. We accept that this is life. We conform. And then ofcourse we have all these subcultural groups claiming to be different and one is more free and independent than the other, only problem is, all these subcultural groups follow the patterns of "our" society. Why? Because they're all about blending in, having a common opinion, if you can't adjust to the main thinking of the group, then you do not fit in. And we believe that our only remedy to all of that working is to drink it all away during the weekends, sometimes even during the week(we're free, right?). And ofcourse we have fun when we do it, when we party, when we go to concerts, when we go to pubs, when we get laid for the night not even remembering who it was with in the first place(nor do we care right? "Gotta get laid!!!"), but is it really freedom?

Is it really life?

I've had enough of this. For me this isn't a life, it's a bloody joke. We're not meant to live like this. We have a whole world to explore, to play in, we have feelings to express, oceans to cross, mountains to climb, we have skills to be shared, we have forests to wander, earth to walk on. We have everything we need around us, but we don't see it.
But it's never too late to wake up, to take a chance, to really make your life worth living.
And me?
I'm getting the hell out of here.