Keeping promises made while traveling

padlocks

Photo: powazny

When Rich Stupart makes promises while traveling, he intends to keep them. This is his trick.

IN EVERY EXTENDED trip I have taken, the back page of my journal carries a section with the scrawled title promises. Underneath on each line and in various pens, pencils, and degrees of legibility are lines of commitments:

Post pictures of Roses children to her. Address

Email Fairview Baptist church to tell them their donated toys arrived

Ostrich feathers to dancers in Cope village

Each is a promise that I made somewhere during my travels, one that I would like to try and keep. I began to realise early on that the more I connect with people on the road and share the experience of journeying together, the more likely it is that, at some point, I will promise something.

Whatever the promises are that I might make, the point is that the longer I am on the road, the more of them I find myself making.

It may be as small as agreeing to keep in touch or send a letter, or as big as helping a local NGO set up a website and connect with interested people back home. Whatever the promises are that I might make, the point is that the longer I am on the road, the more of them I find myself making.

Which, on a long enough timeline, presents the problem of keeping track of who, exactly, I have promised what. And where I was meant to post this picture or write that letter to.

And so came the idea of a promise book. Nothing fancier than the back pages of my journal, it keeps track of every promise I make and allows me, once I am home again, to make good on them. I am able to print and post all of the photographs that I said I would. I can write that letter and put up that website.

Not everyone is as much of a bean counter about tracking promises like that though. Some folk I have met simply hang onto a scattered series of papers with small notes, email addresses, or post boxes on the backs of beer labels and torn pages. They seem to be able to remember the context simply by looking at the stains and the details. They can immediately tell you who they were talking to and what they had obliged themselves to do.

Other, stricter travelers that I have encountered simply refuse to obligate themselves to people they meet on the way. Refusing to make promises in the first place means never having to worry about raising peoples expectations and then letting them down later.

Admittedly, you cant help everyone, and travel is more than handing out favours to people that you meet along the way. Still, sometimes you make friends as you go. Or you take a really great snap of someone in exchange for agreeing to send them a copy because it seemed like a fair exchange. Unless you are prepared to travel in a hermetically sealed social bubble, relationships of all kinds will happen, in all of their obligation-inducing, exciting messiness.

So until I manage to develop a much better memory for names and numbers, or stop making new friends, a promise book will be my little reminder to go to the post office and make good.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Worlds Oldest Maps

Image
Man has been carving symbols in to stones as well as upon cavern walls for thousands of years so it was usually a make a difference of time before maritime inscriptions would arise to assistance guide a hunting as well as foraging patterns. From cavern drawings as well as Babylonian clay tablets to mill carvings as well as papyrus text, here are a little of a worlds oldest maps (in no particular order). 1418 Ming Dynasty Map The map graphic upon top of is pronounced to be a copy of an strange 1418 Ming Dynasty Map, that potentially proves that in a 15th century, a Chinese were already exploring a shores of modern-day North America. This chronicle was copied in 1763 by artist Mo Yi-tong as well as was sold for $500. Read A Review of a Historical Importance of Oldest World Map by Gunnar Thompson, PhD for some-more information. atalhyk 6200 B.C. Babylonian Clay Map During a 1963 excavation in Ankara, Turkey, British archeologist James Mellaart unearth what is pronounced to be one of a be...
Keep reading

How meditation relates to happiness

Image
Meditation leads to mindfulness Studies point out how valuable meditating can be to overall well-being. PEOPLE HAVE BEEN meditating for thousands of years, but it seems only recently that its gaining credibility by the scientific community. The shame is that many wont even give things a second thought unless some researcher or scientist proves its benefits, choosing to ignore the wisdom of experience. An article at Forbes discusses research done that correlates meditation and happiness . First, a Harvard University study has shown that wandering minds are an attribute of unhappy people. 2250 volunteers (ages 18-88, from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds and occupations) were used in the study they were contacted at random intervals by the researchers and asked what they were currently doing and what they were actually thinking about. almost half of the time (46.9%) people were thinking about something else. They were then asked whether what they were thinking about ...
Keep reading

Notes on a shrike

Image
Photo: dobak Mary Sojourner cant leave the dead bird there to get flattened. I WALK NORTH in the Mojave. I listen to my friend on the cell phone. She tells me of her recent work with a healing process called EMDR. Im about to cross the two-lane highway. Something lies on the edge of the asphalt. I look. It is a dead bird gray and black and white. I pick it up. There is no mark on it, no blood or broken bone. I cant bear to think of it being flattened. The feathers are exquisitely soft against the palm of my right hand. I am walking to the Joshua Buddha and I know to carry the bird to the dead tree that looks like a gray seated Buddha. My friend begins to tell me the details of the second EMDR sessions. I realize I am not listening because I need to concentrate solely on carrying the bird to the Joshua Tree. I tell her I will call her back. At the tree, I tuck the bird in the broken space between the stump and a dead branch. He for I know somehow it is a he is just below what would b...
Keep reading