nomad

I wake up in the morning to the sound of car honks.

I go to bed at night to the sound of car alarms.

In simpler times mankind only needed food, water, and shelter to survive. It was only natural that man moved where these needs sufficed him – Nomads; traveling across land and water to find what they needed to survive. Stability did not exist during this time, because in fact nothing was stable but the desire to be stable which drove the nomadic movement from one place to another.

As time moved forward, we built cities and nomads slowly became extinct; or so we thought. We filled the walls of our cities with the means for our needs to come to us. We invented a new way of living, and we created homes. Soon everything one could need was available to him within the walls of these cities. Travel was no longer a necessity for survival, but a means for trade and economy. The economy, a new concept at the time, grew and grew, and before we knew it we had new needs, needs that with depleting resources and the rise of populations became harder and harder to suffice. Today ours needs have grown into a web of complexities that can hardly ever be met. If this is true, then it is no wonder that we are never satisfied, and we’re always running after something; or running from something running after us. The reality that surrounds us is continuously morphing and adapting to our needs, or better yet to what we think we need. Families are broken in half for fathers and mothers that need to find work where they can. The homes that we built are breaking because they cannot survive in the world that we created for them. Stability has become a phenomenon that we only know because it existed once in between where we were and where we are today.

As nomads stability did not exist, and today it does not exist again. One might even say that we are nomads again, but how? How are we nomads if we own property and live in the same country? It’s simple. Nomads had three needs and once they could meet them in one place and sustain them, they were no longer nomads. Today we have a countless number of needs that cannot be found in one place and cannot be sustained. In a sense, we don’t need to be homeless to not have a home. We spend our lives in mixed batter of thoughts and emotions, fueled by desires that are constantly changing and increasing in number. We run after needs that are defined to us by a world that is in itself unstable.

Through all this turmoil, it is humanity itself that has been providing stability. Humanity provides us with connections to people through friendship, love, and family that instills a sense of stability in our unconscious. Humanity enables us to feel a sense of belonging to a certain place or time, we are driven by the need to feed this sense of belonging. Here is where we are lost again. Truth be told, I don’t think any of us feel like we belong, in this world that keeps moving further and further away from what we know. Technology progresses towards creating new means of survival as the world around us changes. These new means are created in the light of a world that in itself is unfamiliar to us.

We are pursuing humanity, but the world that we have created is destroying it. Traditions that have been passed from generation to generation are now considered obsolete. Values that were once considered sacred are becoming old men’s tales that we only here about and roll our eyes to. We shape our minds and our bodies to fit into this world based on greed and progress; but progress towards what? Towards an existence in the shadows of tall buildings filled with corporate machines, and a world that punishes “good old-fashioned values”.

I wish I had my grandfather’s conviction and belief in family and honor. I wish I could have met a chivalrous man and asked him what he thought the world should be. In truth I wish we could have gotten this far without forgetting what got us here, without forgetting the very core of what makes us human.

I am only 25 years old, and I look today at a world where childhood no longer exists. Instead of cherishing a child’s innocence, this world beats it out of them before its time. Childhood has become a lost concept, and with it all the innocence in the world is at risk.

My father once told me that if I were to marry, I should marry a man of principle. I cherish these words, and I live my life to the sound of his voice. Not only to marry a man of principle, but to be a woman of principle. I carry my principles with me at all times, and live by them.

I believe family is a bond that is created and only strengthened by blood. 

I believe that every individual should be respected and honored. 

I believe that children should play, and adults should worry.

I believe that we have basic human rights, but everything else we have we must earn and fight for to sustain.

I believe in honesty, because everything else fades.

I carry my beliefs with me, they are the principles that engraved in my mind and heart, make me the person I am today. Still I do not claim to know any truths, and I do not claim that it is always easy to stand by my principles in today’s world. Today stability is an illusion that we hold on to with possessions and money, as for a few of us, we carry what’s left, or what we still remember, of real stability in our hearts.

I only know two things for sure.

When I wake up in the morning I will hear cars honking, and when I go to bed at night I will hear car alarms firing. These two truths are stable in my life. The rest, I have not found yet.

I am a Nomad.