backpack meditations

"Where ya' headed?" is the most common question I get when accosted by strangers on the road. They see the backpack and trekking pole, and immediately realize that this burly, blubbery guy is Doing Something Important. I've finally trained myself to answer "The east coast!" whenever I hear this question; for the longest time, I'd been saying "DC" or "Alexandria," even though I don't yet know what my eventual destination will be; I only know that the walk will end when I reach the Atlantic.

Whenever I hit a campsite or motel, however, it's a different story: no one has any questions for me after I shed the backpack and start to stroll around town. Deprived of my portable shelter, I return to Joe Normalcy and reenter the realm of the incurious, which goes to show that this whole notion of "projecting an aura" is bogus: I obviously don't wear my 400 miles on my sleeve.

The backpack, my faithful Gregory brand (my previous pack was also a Gregory, and it was nice to see my brand loyalty vindicated by the likes of hiking guru Colin Fletcher, who swears by the brand), is the largest size available; when it's on my back, it's impossible to ignore. This is also true at the olfactory level, too; after all the sweat I've oozed into the harness, it's a very stinky piece of equipment.

It's strange to think about how our clothing and accessories affect others' perceptions of us; our external traits often announce what place we occupy in society. These traits would include hairstyles, jewelry, tattoos, and other indicators of who we are. A backpack and trekking pole scream "traveler!" to the world-- very different from shambling about in a pile of sweat- and urine-smelling rags, despite the often-distressing similarity in smell between the traveler and the homeless person. In Korea, when you see an older gent wearing a traditional white hanbok and sporting a beard, you'd be justified in guessing that he's an artist; most modern Korean men are clean-shaven, but the artist's beard functions almost like an emblem of his trade. In the US, who can blame you for looking at a kid who dresses in Goth style and surmising that this person is probably a mixed bag of gloomy narcissism and death-obsession?

So even though we Westerners are told not to judge a book by its cover, the fact is that the cover is often-- very often-- a faithful reflection of the content, despite not being the whole story.

Confucianism got a bad rap (mainly from Taoists) for supposedly placing too much emphasis on externals, but this sort of pompous superficiality wasn't what Confucius was after. For Confucius, it wasn't important to "keep up appearances"; instead, it was important to make sure that one's inner and outer realities were working in concert. In the West, we're familiar with this concept of inside-outside harmony: we call such a state integrity.

What integrity means will depend on the culture. Koreans and Americans might agree that an honest person shows her honesty through her words and actions; they might, however, disagree over the idea that "a teacher should always look the part of a teacher"-- something many Koreans strongly believe but many Americans reject, which is why a lineup of young Korean and young American university profs will look so wildly different.

Sci-fi author Barbara Hambly once formulated an interesting maxim in one of her novels: "Be what you wish to seem." This was one of Hambly's more coherent turns of phrase (I'm not a big fan of hers), and it's stayed with me for years, perhaps because it's such a concise and profound formulation of what integrity boils down to.*

Unfortunately, both "guilt" and "shame" cultures** have gravitated toward the "keeping up appearances" end of the spectrum; in politics and religion, for example, tearful repentance is only for those who get caught in the act. Look at American televangelist Jimmy Swaggart and Korean scientist Hwang Woo-seok.

Ancient cultures often linked human integrity to the natural order, something of an extension of the anthropocentric "inner/outer harmony" concept. Hindus took sacrifice very seriously as a means of world-maintenance, for example; human rituals (and the proper state of mind while performing them) helped keep dharma from slipping into adharma. The ancient Chinese believed there existed an intimate connection between the integrity of a ruler and the will of Heaven. Even the Western notion of the "divine right" of monarchy has echoes of this linkage of the human and natural/cosmic/supernatural realms. Many stories in the Hebrew scriptures associate natural disasters with human sin-- a concept that persists to this day.***

The human brain is adept at finding patterns, and will gladly create patterns when none are to be found. The brain is also a massively parallel processor with an amazing capacity for finding and creating numerous types of associations, from sensory to thematic to abstract. All this means the brain is great at thinking analogically, which is one reason why people see similarities and/or connections between, say, one's inner and outer existence, or between the human and natural worlds.

And this is probably why people latch onto externals and makes guesses about others' internal reality: you see a guy with a huge backpack and guess that he's on a long, long journey. The problem, though, is that we have no such thoughts about the guy when he sheds the backpack and becomes Joe Normal. It's possible, then, to judge a book by its cover, but not always advisable.

I apologize that this essay has ended with such a mundane, trivial, obvious conclusion, but hey-- I never claimed to be deep.

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*If someone told you not to end sentences with prepositions, they were feeding you a load of bullshit. Ancient grammar and style manuals from the 1950s and 60s might deem such a move verboten, but it's kosher in modern North American English, even at the most formal level. Consider what in linguistics is called the petrified expression-- a turn of phrase that has evolved into an unalterable chunk of verbiage. A good example is the phrasal verb "[to] put up with," which bizarrely features two prepositions, and whose elements must always be written in their original sequence. You would have to say:

This isn't something I can put up with.

and not:

This isn't something up with which I can put.

...which is simply wrong.

Because "put up with" is a petrified expression, it can't be broken up into something supposedly more proper; "...up with which I can put." Sorry, but the "up with" stays at the end of the sentence.

Quite a few antiquated ideas about proper English circulate as memes in cyberspace and meatspace. Consider the "never split an infinitive" rule, which held sway in my father's generation, but which most modern grammar and style manuals will note is no longer the cardinal sin it once was. While I personally try to avoid splitting infinitives for esthetic reasons, I won't stifle your desire to boldly go where no one has gone before.

**While a simplistic way to categorize cultures, the basic idea is that "guilt" cultures see ethics in terms of personal conscience, whereas "shame" cultures are more concerned about one's status in the eyes of others. One feels shame in front of one's peers or betters; one feels guilt even when alone, and often without regard to how others view one. There are those who characterize the modern West as largely a guilt culture, whereas many Asian and Middle Eastern countries are shame cultures.

How true or clear this distinction is is open to debate, especially when we consider how diverse and complex modern Western cultures are. After all, many people who immigrate to the West come from shame cultures and don't fully assimilate into their new home. This certainly changes the tenor of whatever guilt culture exists in the larger society, and makes it increasingly difficult to claim that "the West is a guilt culture." At best we can say, as I said before, that it's largely a guilt culture.

***This is a rich topic for discussion, as we have reached a point in our history where human activity is now the focal point of a heated debate about major changes in the environment. While I have strong opinions on this topic, I won't air them in this post.


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