This is Optimal Living Daily, episode 280, what 48 hours in the wilderness taught me about unconditional love, part 1, by Paul DeJoe with becomingminimalist.com. Get ready to maximize your potential with Optimal Living Daily, the podcast that brings you the best in personal development and productivity every day of the week. Your optimal life awaits. Now here's your host, Justin Mollech.
Hello, hello, happy Friday. Welcome to Optimal Living Daily. I'm your host and narrator, Justin Mollech, reading you the best blogs I can find to help you optimize your life. And today we have a guest post from becomingminimalist.com.
And it's a long post, so I'm going to break it up into two episodes. And the author, Paul DeJoe, flew to Mexico with only a passport and a book as an experiment in changing environments, overcoming challenges, and self-exploration. So Joshua Becker of becomingminimalist asked him to write about it when he got back. So let's hear about that experience and start optimizing your life.
What 48 hours in the wilderness taught me about unconditional love, part 1, by Paul DeJoe with becomingminimalist.com. I just got back from an 11-day trip to Mexico. I left the country with a passport, goggles, one change of clothes, a knife, flashlight, and $50 my brother gave me when he dropped me off at the airport. My intention was to try survival camping for the whole 11 days, as in find my own food and water while making shelter on a secluded beach somewhere.
To be honest, I've been thinking about what to write about this experience for a while. My own internal lie detector kept shutting down the superficial wannabe profound thoughts that were coming up for topics. The truth is, I didn't last 11 days. I barely lasted 48 hours.
Yeah, there were physical challenges like finding drinking water and food, but the biggest challenge is your own thoughts and psychology when it's dark, when there's no one around, you can't sleep, there's nothing to do, you're thirsty, hungry, and you're incredibly lonely. At about 7 o'clock in the evening, it becomes very dark. And when you're trying to sleep in a 20-yard space between the ocean and the jungle with no one around, your thoughts become racy and all over the place. You have a thousand thoughts at once, but your mind is still empty because none stick.
This is hell and difficult to explain. Occasionally, however, some of your thoughts seem focused and they arrive at crystal clear personal maxims like what's and who matters to you and what type of person you'd like to be. I kept a journal that I could barely see and wrote down every thought that came to mind. Living this experience, even for a short time, was one of the best and worst things I've ever done.
Feeling painfully alone and helpless between some of the loudest waves crashing and the weirdest sounds coming from the jungle puts your mind in a foreign state. I kept trying to fall asleep, but I had to sleep so close to the fire that I was being awakened by the heat. At one point, I heard what sounded like something drop and roll down the cliff. It was in front of me and I immediately put my flashlight in that direction.
I saw two green eyes. I'm positive they were eyes because I did not blink or take the flashlight off them. They slowly faded to the right behind a tree, then back into the jungle. It was the most scared I've ever been in my life.
It seemed smart to run into the ocean with all my clothes on in the pitch black. And yet, in what was one of the most beautiful moments of my life, I was sitting on a log in front of a fire with the ocean to my left, the jungle to my right, and every single star in the sky as clear as day. I don't think I've ever in my life sat still for that long just staring and appreciating something. This is what I wrote.
Quote, I was inspired to write this entry partly because of the stars in the ocean. Sitting alone and scared with only a fire, you feel insignificant against these tremendous creations. I've heard so many times people mention this feeling of insignificance and being small or a speck of dust against these. I've always felt the same way.
Never felt good to accept insignificance, but it felt accurate. Tonight it feels accurate for another reason. Compared with the stars and ocean, you are a speck of dust. That's okay.
Their beauty is explained in light years and in fathoms. They're here to keep us humble and to awe us, but they're not here for comparison. They're here to remind us that we can be significant to others and to make others feel significant. There are no shortages of opportunities every day.
Being painfully alone right now, all I can think about is how lucky I am to have the family and the friends that I have. It also feels like I never need to prove anything to any of them. Unquote. One of the ideas that came to my mind at this time and from this entry was this concept of utility margin.
In any situation you are in, you possess some thing, whether material or immaterial, that you can give to someone else who would get more utility, value, and or appreciation out of it than you are getting from it right now. The idea is that while you possess it, it is not worth as much as it could be to someone else. For example, with immaterial possessions, right this instant, I can go to the grocery store and smile at the cashier and ask her how her day is going. I also don't have to.
But if I don't, for no good reason, I just miss a chance to make the world a better place and someone's day better. For material possessions, there's something in your possession at this moment that someone else would really love to have. You may even love to have it yourself. It's probably why you have it in the first place.
But give it away. Give it to them anyway and make the world a better place. You don't have to say anything other than, I want you to have this. I think you'll get more out of it than I am right now.
Seeing the elation on their face is one of the best feelings in the world. Try it, at least once. Tell me about it. To be continued.
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