This is a guy who dabbled in America's 9-5 workforce, tried to settle into the normalcy of society, but constantly felt squished by the edges of his cookie-cutter lifestyle. So, he embarked on a series of journeys in different parts of his life (he's like forty-something now), and has complied his stories into a travel memoir. And it is fabulous.
I am only on Part I, which details his travels across America to his new job at Hewlett Packard in Idaho, but I'm hooked. Seriously, some of the things he writes I swear have come out of my mouth. He just has such a fabulously refreshing take on the world, and it frequently makes me ponder my own views and values. Here are two excerpts from Accidental Enlightenment--and I'm sure they're not the last. Oh, and fyi, he sometimes refers to himself as Gulliver...kinda cheesy, but I've decided to just go with it.
Blessed be those aware of their dharma, for they shall inherit the Earth. It takes some of us Gullivers a bit longer to hone down priorities and chart that map...sometimes even several lifetimes, the mystics would assert. Which is why it seems futile to judge anyone; we have no idea where they are on their journey....Maybe this was another insight: to recognize that we not only call certain people into our lives, but also have enough wisdom not to ask why and just let things unfold...as they will.
Gulliver had been given another opportunity to ponder what he did not want to include in his own life journey. Better get rid of all the anger, frustration, resentment and pent-up regrets at an early age so they don't spill out into the years like a bushel of bad apples, contaminating the entire harvest of one's days thereafter. Provincialism of family roots that choked off the life force was exactly what needed to be dispensed with--and how better than by travel, exploring the world, to witness the same dangerous sinkholes in every part of the planet?
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