In his book “Daodejing” Laotse writes something like “The way is the goal”. Sounds odd in a goal-driven society. And I don’t know if I’d 100 percent subscribe to that. However, I admit it holds some truth – maybe a lot of truth as I think of it. Nevertheless, I also value reaching the goal, the destination.
Maybe I'm a bit odd
For example: going up a montain in a cable car and have a look around, I sure enjoy the panoramic view. It stays, however, superficial. It does not reach the core of my being. On the other hand, if I hiked up the steep slopes and reached the top, the view then takes my breath away (almost literally!). The emotions run so much deeper.
So, having it easy makes my emotions kind of flat while working sometimes hard to reach my goal deepens my feelings and gives me great pleasure. Working at it makes it part of my very being. So, that’s Big Paul, my project to work on for a purpose.
Purpose is so important
Without purpose, dreams fade away into a gray fog of nothingness. Getting a ready-made camper is just not the thing for me. It lacks my personal imprint, it’s so “finished”. Kind of like going up a montain with a cable car. I want to create something of my own.
Faded old glory?
And yes. There are also memories coming up while working on Big Paul. More than 45 years ago I did a similar thing with some friends. We bought a rundown VW-Bus and turned it into a camper van. We named her “Susi” and traveled across North Africa together. What a great time and great experiences we had! This left impressions, I’ll never forget: the car broke down on a desert road, we were invited to an evening feast by a local farmer serving couscous and chicken, sweet mint tea and prickly pears as dessert. Just to name a few. Ahh! Those precious moments.
Especially the feast will stick with me forever. When the farmer invited us, he assumed we had a woman in our company. So, they planned accordingly. When we arrived, he recognized we were three men and no woman. No big deal, you may think. Wrong! According to local tradition, wives and girls are allowed to a feast only, if the guest brings female company. What a trouble this misunderstanding caused! The women had to stay in a separate room somewhere in the house – we did not see a trace of them. Now men amongst men, they received us with an amazing, warmhearted hospitality. After the host washed our hands he dished out the food with his bare hands. When we finished the meal, he addressed us: “We have shared this meal together, now we will be friends forever”. That phrase touched our deepest souls and I still carry it with me.
We did not notice first that once we were served a dish it was taken off the table and carried out of the room. We learned later that it was brought to the hidden women. It appeared to us Europeans that the women were served our leftover food. We pitied them. But then, we did not know their traditions and how they felt about it. We noticed some kind of strategy. Though the women appeared to be banned from socializing the host watched out that there was plenty of food left for all of them. They might have had a great time amongst themselves. I’ll never know.
Traveling the back roads back then always led to interesting encounters with locals.
Can we do it again?
And now, we are on the verge of creating new adventures. This time, I’m not building a furnished camper van. Mostly for German licencing issues, I want to keep Big Paul registered as a delivery van. So, everything I need for living in the car has to be removable, payload in a manner of speaking. But that building project lies in the future. Right now I address quite mundane tasks like cleaning the car – and enjoying every minute of it.
I made a short video clip of me happily cleaning. You can watch it on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMavkTh63rQ
