Finding Oneself

Hippies love “finding” themselves and tend to take a lot of time doing it. To regular folks, these efforts to “find” themselves look an awful lot like wasting time and avoiding responsibility with an ever-growing list of personal diversions. But to the hippies, it’s “exploration and evaluation of finding one’s place in the universe.” Such efforts typically involve traveling to developing nations and eking out an existence, often thanks to funding and other support from mom and dad. For example, moving to India to “study” another culture and religion, or working on a farm co-op in South America for a few months, in order to gain a greater understanding of the plight faced by the world’s poor, all the while getting a nice and tidy few hundred bucks deposited into their bank accounts each month from the ‘rents. Or simply bumming around with a backpack and a Lonely Planet travel guide to X region, thanks in large part to the around-the-world plane ticket bought for them by grandma. While these things may be fun, and possibly even exciting, they aren’t really ways of “finding” oneself because, after all is said and done, these same hippies tend to “find” themselves back in the Pacific Northwest, smoking someone else’s dope and eating their parents’ organic hummus, while they contemplate turning 30 and wonder where all the time went.