Life and Travel Lessons from Tyler Durden

Most of us are familiar with the movie Fight Club, the movie that came out in 1999 and quickly gained a cult following. Tyler Durden played by Brad Pitt and the narrator, a depressed and insomniac man played by Ed Norton made a lot of us think a lot. But it’s all a masterpiece created by the brilliant Chuck Palahniuk (author).

Whether you watched the movie or read the book, viewers and readers are left with a strong message: “This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time.”

More than 15 years later, the message still resonates for people, and maybe even more so now that the world has become a puppet to consumerism and the dictators of economy, power, and government. It will also strongly resonate for travelers who just seek to be free, and basically want to runaway from society and its ignorant rules and expectations.

We have to start taking the reins of our own lives. We have to start listening to ourselves, have our own beliefs and have integrity, stand up for them, not be afraid to truly express what we believe, do what we feel we need to do in our hearts rather than just fall into a pattern dictated by advertisement. We need to stop ignoring our true intentions, our hearts, and our intuitions. We are human, not robots.

So, let’s see what Tyler Durden can teach us about this:

“It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.” 

So, this one is not completely realistic but I absolutely believe it. Especially when you think about it less in the sense of possessions whether material or otherwise but more in our attachment to these possessions. The constant desire of having something, never being satisfied. We are slaves to these desires and the more you feed them the stronger and never-ending they get. If we want nothing, we have everything.

This obsessive attachment comes in play again because of the consumerism culture. It’s what feeds it and we are surrounded by it, everywhere we go. How can we ignore it? We have to be conscious about it, we have to keep listening to ourselves and realize what truly matters. Less is more people.

 

“You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. . . You’re not your fucking khakis.”

One hundred percent. I can’t tell you how much I agree with Tyler here. So much so that the words just speak for themselves.

I think people – millenials are realizing this. I think this is also why more than ever people just want to drop everything and go travel the world. Even though money controls the world and we pretty much can’t do anything without it, a lot of us don’t think money is everything. The goal is not to have as much money as possible and sacrifice of our lives for it, becoming slaves to it. Material possession and appearance is not success.

For me, living a successful life means to live a life where we are content, where we have free time, where we live our true intentions, where we follow our hearts, where there is a good balance between our hearts and our minds and we’re not ruled by our minds. Where we have just what we need and nothing more, where we don’t neglect our responsibilities, where we don’t need to be doing or buying something all the time, where we are okay just being. Where we are not selfish, but we are loving, and we are giving, especially when we don’t have much.

“People do it everyday, they talk to themselves… they see themselves as they’d like to be, they don’t have the courage you have, to just run with it.”

This comes back to listening to ourselves and not being deafened by the consumer world that surrounds us. People are afraid to just be themselves. People are afraid to be different, to be judged. Yeah, people try to be different and original, but by doing so they become just like many other people, that’s not what I mean. We shouldn’t try to be different, we shouldn’t try to be ourselves.. if you’re trying you are not doing a good job. It should come naturally.

People are afraid to stand up to their beliefs. People will do and say anything just to fit in and to look good. We have lost ourselves. We have lost our identities. We have lost our souls. We need to go find them, within. We need to have the courage and step out of our comfort zones.

Travelers can be good at the latter. Traveling does mean stepping out of our comfort zones. It’s a good step in the right direction. We have to learn to adapt to unexpected circumstances, we have to learn to be tolerant of people and cultures that might be completely different to what we know. Traveling and moving frees us in a way from that bubble that society has created, the encapsulated delusions people live by.

 

“I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say… let’s evolve, let the chips fall where they may.”

I love this. None of us are perfect so we shouldn’t even pretend to be. We are just perfect the way we are, I wish people would just accept people as they are and not expect them to be something that their own minds created. We are not evolving as society as much as it may look like, quite the opposite. We are turning against each other, we are all enemies and judges. What’s up with people getting offended about EVERYTHING? It’s not personal.

Some of the best trips are when we do let the chips fall where they may. When not every hour is planned, when we go with the flow. I like to adopt that in my life everyday… going with the flow. Accepting, learning and adapting.

So, what do you say, champ? Shall we go start live our own life dictated by no one else but ourselves?

“This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time.”