WHISPERS THROUGH AMERICA

“As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a den, and laid me down in that place to sleep; and as I slept, I dreamed a dream.

I dreamed, and behold, I saw a man clothed with rags, standing in a certain place, with his face from his own house, a book in his hand, and a great burden upon his back. I looked, and saw him open the book, and read therein; and as he read, he wept and trembled; and, not being able longer to contain, he brake out with a lamentable cry, saying, “What shall I do?”
– John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress

The kid had been raised on superheroes. He believed in truth, justice, and the American way. He believed in destiny and fate, and he believed that with great power comes great responsibility.

Though his parents had been soldiers, they encouraged his passion for the arts. Before long, he was on track to become an architect. The classes weren’t easy, but he told himself that nothing worth doing ever is. If he failed at his goal, he could fall back on becoming a professional artist. In 2020, that resolve gave way.

The pandemic was devastating. While the kid had never had many friends, the lockdown forced a complete social isolation that drove him to despair. Nothing was real anymore. Would anything ever be real again? He began failing his classes. When his term ended, he dropped out. His first plan was to take a gap year to rethink his plans of going for architecture, but his confusion and despair ran so much deeper.

He never slept easily. Many nights he spent staring at the ceiling, mouthing prayers to a god who never answered. More and more, he spent them sleeping on the floor. The kid had always been a passionate believer. If he could sharpen himself into real focus, then maybe his search for the truth would be rewarded. Jesus had promised that the truth could be found, that the door would be opened, that enough persistence would certainly be rewarded. The kid began to live like a radical. He had always admired monks. He put away sentimentality, clothed himself in black, spurned comfort and softness, worked his body raw and bruised in obsessive workouts, and eventually shaved his head clean to the skin. They were all outward manifestations of an inner resolve: a striving for pure ascetic discipline.

Still, he felt no closer to the truth. Still he went to bed in horror and doubt. Still he walked through every day with anger but without any kind of purpose. He threw himself completely into a mad quest for truth against an unknowable universe. Like an unstable fault line, this friction would eventually have to find release – likely in cataclysmic violence.

Finally, in the early winter of 2021, he had an epiphany. That night was at first like any other night at the time had been. Restless, anxious, and long.

He knelt on the floor, pulled his face into an open scream and tried not to let it out. Noise would draw attention. His parents would think something was wrong – but he would never be able to explain what it was. There was something inside him crying out for expression, an animal lashing at the bars of its cage, an explosive force gathering power. He beat his weak and insignificant fists against his knees and rested his head against the floor, begging for relief.

There was no light from heaven. The boy would never know what had changed, or why, but he knew his life would forever be split into before and after. He opened new eyes to look calmly around his room.

Burn it all – the thought came with perfect clarity. Leave it all behind you. Begin again. It was as pure as any animal instinct had ever been. He must burn everything and start over. To save himself, he must lose himself, or die trying.

Was this what people meant when they said they had been born again? Was this what they meant by inner peace? Despite the overwhelming calm, the moment had been empty. No voice of god, no sense of final tranquility. It was nothing like what he had been told to expect. This new paradigm carried with it a severe, holy mission. It had nothing to do with inner peace – it was a declaration of war; a call to action.

The kid was almost twenty. His teenage years had gotten away from him while he buried his head in the sand, trying to relive his childhood, hiding away from the world. Maturity had backed up on him until it finally broke through, and now he had years’ worth of work to do.

There was nothing the kid hated more than cowardice. He saw it as his deepest flaw. If he could overcome fear, it would send a message to the powers above – or at least it would send a message to himself. He began to form an idea of a pilgrimage. He would hit the road, try his luck, risk everything and stake his life on blind faith. It came to mean something to him as serious as Campbell’s “call to adventure” and he knew that if he did not answer the call, he would die the cold, slow death of a coward. He needed to see what he was truly made of.

No one else would understand and no one else could – it was a personal mission. If he were told to do it, it would not matter. If it were safe to do, it would not matter. If it were rational, it would not matter. The point of the mission was to leave all safety behind, even the safety of hiding behind rationality. The kid had always been able to justify every little thing he did. This time he had to admit that he wanted to do this for no other reason than to do it. Nothing else could ever be enough.

This is the story of every teenage boy, and it is repeated with every generation. It flattered the kid’s ego to think of himself as unique, but he was only following in the tracks of millions of drifters and soul searchers before him. The kid had always liked the stories of cowboys, itinerant workers, nomads wandering the desert, knights-errant, tramps and hobos. Even Jesus had been a drifter. It was a lifestyle for lost souls and for zealots, a terrible suffering to purge an afflicted conscience, and a grand adventure to embark on; but more than anything, it was a challenge that would require fierce courage and the willingness to die.

The kid had gathered all the most reliable information he could on how people lived on the road these days. Hitchhiking was a dying art, but electricity and running water were easier to get these days than they had ever been. The kid got plenty of ideas on how to dumpster dive, find odd jobs, stealth camp, and all the rest. Information was easy to come by, but talk is cheap and reality is brutal. Nothing could have prepared him for the path he was about to walk. If anyone else had lived it, it wouldn’t exactly be his.

He planned an exit from civilized life for over a year. During that time he left his parents’ house to go live with his brother’s family. It was another stepping stone that brought him closer to true independence; but it wasn’t anywhere close to enough. The kid knew he wasn’t prepared to be an adult in any way. Any habits he achieved, any knowledge he acquired, would be lipstick on a pig – because deep down he still felt like a child, and he still had no idea if he even wanted to live. He felt like a useless burden. When his car broke down and was totaled, he took it as his cue to leave.

The kid had no idea what might lie on the other side for him. All he knew was that he could see a path. It might be a path that no one else could see, but it was clear to him, and it was his duty to walk it even if the world stood against him. He knew that all else would be false. There was nowhere left to turn, nothing to fall back on. He would stand and fight or else he would die. He would force himself to become a man.
     
His family’s house would become the house of destruction, forever behind him. His belongings would become a great burden upon his back. His faith, broken though it was, would become both his compass and his goal. And so he set out to try his fortune in the wide world.