“Jesus” – Lac-St-Jean, Quebec

So I made it to Moncton. No drama, no agony, not even any inconvenience really. I almost ran out of gas once and I had to stop at an autobody shop. A morbidly obese man told me to drive five miles down the road. I did, and then I filled up. I hate it when things work out.

The weather is still miserable and it’s supposed to be this way for a while. I’m living in a duplex in North Moncton, close to Magnetic Hill. It’s good.

In January, 1952 a young medical student from Argentina took a year off from his studies to travel around South America with a friend on a motorcycle. After nine months his world-view had changed completely; he identified with the poor and suffering he met on his path, began to dream of a unified Latin American continent, committed the rest of his life to fighting with them until death. That man was Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, and the jottings he made along the course of his journey would later be published as ‘The Motorcycle Diaries’.

I do not mean to compare myself to Che; but in a way I do. In many ways one’s travels come to define them as a person: a traveller does not find themself; they create themself, they are hewn from their raw human potential by their experiences and discoveries, they come closer to realizing their own indefinable essence, if such a thing can be said to exist. Che found oppressed masses, random acts of kindness, a sense of adventure and a willingness to struggle against injustice; I found corporate logos, automatic debit machines, comfortable air-conditioned rooms and a silent, pervasive pressure to conform, to get in line, to hurry up so the next person can pay.

And what did I expect? Hardship? Adventure? Raw human emotion? Hardly. I knew how this trip would end before it began. And if anything really went wrong, I’d be the first on the phone with a list of credit card numbers to bail myself out, to remove the discomfort, to alleviate the pain. If I had really wanted adventure I would have bought myself a one-way ticket to the Congo and burned my passport. Perhaps such a person exists. Perhaps that person is right now on a river ferry, sweating, dehydrated, tired of dealing with corrupt soldiers and border officials, wondering if their next meal will give them food poisoning, questioning whether they should have left at all.

Che’s legend lives on because he lived (and died) for something other than himself. If I, whether in a hotel room in Fredericton or on a river ferry in the Congo, undergo hardship for no end greater than my own ego gratification the trial is meaningless, I am only shadowboxing. Every act of greatness must find a way to transcend the individual, to inspire and embolden others, to unite.

And yet….

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