The Best Time in Your Life

by Travis Hellstrom

  Teachers in my high school used to look at us and say, "This is the best time of your life. You better enjoy it while you can!"

I remember thinking, "Man, I hope not. I mean this is great and I'm loving it, but it's all downhill from here? Shit. I'm only 15."

Then I got to college and the professor looked at our auditorium full of students saying, "This is the best time of your life. Enjoy it!"

I thought, "Are they sharing the same playbook, what is going on? They better be kidding. If it gets worse from here, what's the point!"

But then luckily I got to Peace Corps and figured it out. They were all just kidding (or kidding themselves).

The first year Volunteers told the Trainees, "Enjoy this, it's the best time of your life!" the second years told the first years that, the third years told the second years, and the staff told it to everyone.

Thank you, I've got it.

You're all right.

This is the best time of my life.

Perpetually, always, right now.

Never before.

Never in the future.

This is it.

Remember that and you've got it made.

And if it's not true, make it true.

That was not the best time of your life, this is supposed to be.

The Hardest Year of My Life

This has been one of the hardest years of my life, something of an identity crisis.

In many ways, this was inevitable. When you've had the best year of your life, or several best years in a row, it makes sense that it would come to an end at some point.

I don't mean that to be depressing. It's not.

Having an incredible year feels like reaching a peak. You are on the top of a mountain, standing in a place you have always wanted to stand or dreamed of standing.

Peace Corps was like that for me. Every year seemed like a new peak, I felt clarity and purpose as I stood on top of a great mountain of projects and work I loved, beside friends I loved being around. Being in Mongolia I had some of the best years of my life and I knew that when I was experiencing it, which is an amazing thing. I will always be grateful for that.

Coming Down

Maybe one of the hardest things about climbing a mountain is coming back down. Trying to live your old life and step into an old way of being.

From what I hear coming back to America is always tough for Peace Corps Volunteers, but I bet it's tough for anyone who has traveled and lived abroad for a significant amount of time. You wrestle with who you were there and who you are here. Who are you becomes less of a certainty and more of an evolving story.

When I began Advance Humanity in fall of 2011, the month I finished Peace Corps, it was a one year project. I had goals I wanted to reach and over the course of the year I exceeded each of them. It was a wonderful year.

In fall of 2012 I began graduate school and again had goals I wanted to reach, but I wasn't as clear about them and didn't write them down. They included things like doing well in classes, being a good husband and supporting Tunga as she lived in America for her first year, having fun outside of class, spending more time with my family, traveling, helping with clubs and events on campus, being an RA and a few other things. Truth be told, if I had made a list, it would have been too long. That's never a good thing.

As I finished classes Advance Humanity resurfaced not as the project it once was but as an organization. During graduate school I had met wonderful people I enjoyed working with including professionals and classmates and began to put what we were learning in class into practice. Together with a few of these classmates I incorporated Advance Humanity as a benefit corporation. The idea was move beyond simply inspiring our community and begin empowering everyday humanitarians  as they went out and made a difference in the world.

As you might imagine, starting a company is no small task, especially in America. There are taxes, contracts, incorporation documents and a host of other things that you have to consider. In some ways I was in over my head. Luckily I was surrounded by people I enjoyed working with and they were willing to be patient with me as we figured things out together.

Going Back Up

Now we reach fall of 2013, today, and it's been two years since my mini-retirement in Mongolia. I sit in the beautiful mountains of Vermont as the leaves change to brilliant shades of yellow, orange and red and I write this to say I'm still figuring things out.

Part of me wishes that everything was simple and perfect, all planned out like it might have been had I gone to medical school. First you get accepted, then you do two years of coursework, then two years of clinicals, then three years of residency or more, then step into a clinic or hospital and begin working as a doctor. There are precise dates and requirements at every step and, like them or not, they provide perfect predictability.

However another part of me doesn't wish that at all. The fact that life isn't simple, perfect or planned out means we all have a chance to make our own lives. We get to live how we want, change things up, make a difference, improve the system, fight the man or whatever else you might be into. Even if you are in a residency with set hours and multi-year commitments, you still have a choice. You can be a cog or you can be a person. You can wake up every morning like an automaton or you can wake up excited for the day, ready to take it and slap it around a little bit to wake it up. There are things that need to get done, a world that needs you and people who need your help.

Making a Difference

Being an everyday humanitarian means making a difference and being awesome everyday, like it's your job. You don't need millions of dollars to do it and you don't have to sacrifice your breakfast to do it either. Small choices we make every day matter more than big write-offs at tax season or sizable anonymous donations.

I believe that two people can hold the same job and be worlds apart in the way that they serve others through it. A good doctor and a bad doctor, just like a good teacher and a bad teacher, can have the same education, tools, and salary. The difference is deeper than that.

What drives them? How do they treat people? How many people would describe them as being awesome?

Truth be told, sometimes I wonder if I should have gone to medical school. I could have and I still could.

Being a doctor was something I thought I had to be, something I was perfect for. I was good at it, I had volunteered, trained and shadowed for hundreds and thousands of hours and people all around me told me I would be a great doctor (including friends of mine who are doctors now). I have a feeling you, reading right now, have been told you would be a great ______ at some time in your life. Insert lawyer, teacher, accountant, chef, mother, father, artist, or anything of your choice.

It can be confusing to be told that. Does that mean you are supposed to be that?

Maybe, but probably not.

Being Who You Are

Who you are is deeper than what you do.

I'm sure you would be and could be a great many things.

Also, an interesting idea to consider, had you lived in another time in history (500, 100 or 50 years ago) I bet you would have been a great many other things as well.

Think about it for a second, had you lived at the dawn of the American republic, in the age of Benjamin Franklin the candlemaker / editor / writer / organizer / statesman / diplomat / scientist / discoverer of the gulf stream and much more, what would have been a dream job for you?

Chances are it would have been something completely different than what you might choose today, but you still could have been very happy and successful at it.

All this is to say, there is probably no one perfect thing that each of us should do but rather a combination of wonderful things.

I loved being a Peace Corps Volunteer and it was perfect for me. The challenge now is to find the next wonderful thing and the awesome thing after that.

I look forward to sharing that journey with you here at the dawn of Advance Humanity in the story of Travis Hellstrom the student / writer / volunteer / husband / entrepreneur / humanitarian / discoverer of much, much more.

Write on the First Page

By Travis Hellstrom

Purchashing a journal can be hard, but not as hard as writing on the first page.

Every journal I’ve ever purchased has a blank first page. I always want to write something brilliant, something incredible, to start what could be the best idea-filled journal I ever write in. So, I skip to the fifth page or so and start writing there. I am confident, for some reason, that the brilliant idea will come to me sometime in the future. Until then, the page remains blank.

Like I said, every journal I’ve ever had (still) has a blank first page.

Not anymore.

This is my first blank page of my new website and I’d like to fill it with two things: my dreams and my promises.

Dreams

My dreams here include:

• Simplicity - I want to share my personal journey as I make sense of coming back from the Peace Corps and try to be an everyday humanitarian.
• Hope - I want to bring creative ideas, inspiration and resources to people who honestly want to change the world. You know who you are.
• Gratitude - I want to be proud of what I create here and remain appreciative of the time I have to write and reflect.
• Fun - I want this to be fun, a lot of fun.

Promises

I promise to myself and my readers:

• Honesty - I will write how I honestly feel, not only what I think people might want to read.
• Fun - I will have fun doing this and hopefully that will rub off.
• Brevity - I will keep articles short and to the point.
• Consistency - I will write every week.

That’s it for now.

Time to flip to the second page.

Vipassana Meditation Retreat

One of the big things I failed to write about during my last month in the U.S., but has remained on my mind since then, is the 10-day silent meditation retreat that I went to between April 22nd and May 3rd in Blue Ridge, Virginia. I have talked about it at length with most of you who are reading this thought right now, but I think it is worth writing about and sharing with anyone who is interested in it, if for no other rather than that it is one of the most worthwhile things I have every done in my life. It has really changed the way I look at things for the better. The meditation technique we were taught during the 10-day course is called Vipassana (vi-POSH-ana) meditation and it goes back more than 2,500 years to the time of Siddhartha Gautama the Buddha. Vipassana means “to see things as they really are” and is a process of self-observation to understand universal truths through continued awareness. Buddha, meaning “Enlightened One”, is said to have taught this technique to hundreds of thousands of people around what is now India during the last 40 years of his life. It has everything to do with how you live and very little to do with what you believe. In fact I think Buddha sums it up well with his famous line, “Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.” The retreat provides participants with the time and space in which to concentrate, observe one's thoughts and then move past them to a deeper state of awareness. There is minimal instruction, less than one hour a day, and maximal time for meditation, about twelve hours a day. There are also times built into the day when you can ask questions of the meditation teachers who are present during all of the group meditations. Below is our daily schedule, which is the same for all Vipassana meditation courses throughout the world.

4:00am Wake Up 4:30-6:30 Group Meditation 6:30-8:30 Breakfast 8:00-11:00 Meditation 11:00-1:00 Lunch 1:00-5:00 Meditation 5:00-6:00 Tea Break 6:00-7:00 Group Meditation 7:00-8:00 Teacher Discourse 8:00-9:00 Group Meditation 9:00-9:30 Question Time 9:30pm Lights Out

I was nervous about the course at first. I worried about meditating for hours a day when I had only previously meditated for a maximum of 15 to 30 minutes at a time. I worried about eating vegetarian food for 10 days straight when I had never even eaten for one day on vegetarian food alone. And I worried about the people who I would be sharing my time at the retreat with, what they were like and what living with complete strangers would be like for ten days. Everything turned out great, but I think these were very valid concerns - ones that might even keep someone from attempting the retreat in the first place. So when I got back from the retreat I wrote down a lot of questions that I had as I went through the process and the answers I came to:

How hard is the course, am I really going to be able to sit for that long at a time? The course is as hard as you make it, meaning if you really dig deep and give a lot of effort and attention to what you are doing then it will be quite a challenge. However, if you complain a lot and don’t actually pay attention to what’s really going on, the course will be more frustrating than difficult. Personally I found that pain and discomfort were very necessary tools for me to get to where I needed to be mentally. When I was too comfortable, such as when I was sitting in a chair during a meditation at my cabin, the actual physical act of sitting became too easy and it became harder to concentrate my attention. When I sat on the floor the coarse, painful sensations were there for me to study and experience and then they gave way to more subtle, pleasant sensations and on and on. It was hard to understand at first, but pain is not the enemy and comfort is not the goal. In fact, for me, both became irrelevant in terms of causing a reaction within me. The first step in meditation, as I experienced it, was being able to focus all of my attention on the present moment and to experience the present moment within the framework of my body. Thinking about the past and the future, singing songs in my head, fidgeting around in response to discomfort, as well as a myriad of other distractions only took me away from the present moment. Pain in the present moment, pleasantness in the present moment, itching, stinging, pressure, heat, cold, these are doors to understanding what is really happening around me. There are some cases where chairs or back supports are necessary for meditators, but one of the best people to make that call is your teacher. Talk with your teacher during the question and answer sessions each day, try out new poses and meditation benches, and most of all give each session your honest attention and best effort. Coming into the 10-day course the longest I had ever meditated was 10 minutes straight. Sitting for longer than that seemed like it would kill me. I talked to my teacher and he recommended working little by little to build up my mind’s ability to handle it. He was absolutely right. By the end of the course I was sitting for an hour and a half without moving an inch, blinking an eye or making a twitch. I was also doing this in more than one position. You can absolutely do this and you will amaze yourself.

Is eating vegetarian for ten days difficult? I found the food provided to be very enjoyable and healthy. I had never in my life eaten vegetarian for more than a day or two, but even after eating vegetarian for ten days I didn’t feel like I was skipping a beat. I felt very healthy and well fed. During any given day we had several choices of cereal, breads, jams, peanut butter, salads, fresh bananas, oranges, apples, milk, soy milk, rice milk, pasta, water, coffee, tea, orange juice, oatmeal, granola, soy beans, and cookies.

What are the people like who attend these courses? I can obviously only speak for the course I attended regarding this question, but I found that the people I met were from an incredible variety of backgrounds. In my cabin of eight people we had a retired surgeon, a carpenter, an artist, a linguist with the Department of Defense, a graduate school student, a recent high school graduate, a computer programmer and me, a Peace Corps Volunteer. Religious beliefs represented in our cabin alone included Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism and Atheism, with the course overall including Taoism, Islam, Sikhism and Catholicism. Also in the course at large (I probably met about 1/3 of the attendants), there were teachers, chaplains, ministers, stay-at-home moms, graduate students, returned peace corps volunteers, high school, college and graduate school graduates, engineers, government employees and law enforcement officials. In short, I was very impressed by the people I met during my particular retreat. They created a diverse array of personalities, cultures, beliefs and professions that I found very enjoyable.

How is waking up at 4am every day? I actually found this to be very enjoyable as well. In fact, I wish I could do this more often in my every day life. I found my day to be much more full and productive when I woke up early and went to bed early. It’s a little hard at first, but I really am glad they have the schedule for the course the way that they do.

How is this not a cult? Michael Lee asked me this question and I think this is a very important question to ask of any organized religion, meditation retreat, course, group, club or organization. In my experience cults are groups believe that what they think is absolutely correct and superior to the beliefs and practices of others. Also I have found that in a cult reason and personal experience is treated as inferior to faith and the experiences of someone else. The faith could be in anything or the experiences could be those of a religious leader or the author of a scripture.

On faith and reason, opposite of a cult, this meditation retreat stated what the Dalai Lama himself has said, “Buddhism relies more on one's own effort, on reason rather than faith.” Also, on the value of personal experience, both the retreat and Buddha himself stated, “Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.” I like both of these insights very much and think that they made the entire retreat very comfortable for people of all faiths as they spent time on their own self-awareness. Closing the course Vipassana teacher stated very clearly that there are many ways to arrive at truth in the world and that an individual’s personal experience is more important than anything that was said or done during the retreat. He also repeated what he had said several times over the course of the retreat, “Take what is helpful from this meditation practice and leave what is not helpful.” The Dalai Lama has a similar saying which I really admire, “If anything I’ve said seems useful to you, I’m glad. If not, don’t worry. Just forget about it.” Truth be told, I did hum the Dharma Initiative song from LOST when I first got to the camp...

Where there times when you wanted to quit? There were certainly times where I felt frustrated at my lack of progress, or felt like I should be achieving something that I wasn’t achieving. But ironically, these were also the moments where I was closest to a breakthrough, as I later found out. A very important part of meditation for me was realizing how influential desire had become in my life. I wanted to experience something incredible, I wanted to feel something special and I felt like I was supposed to be somewhere other than where I was. For me the important thing to realize was that the present moment, no matter how un-incredible or un-special, no matter how incredible or special, was what needed my attention. When my mind became sharpened to the point that I was truly experiencing the reality around me, the sensations on my body, the experiences happening every moment, that is when I started to make progress and notice the changes that were always happening every moment. Words of wisdom can enter the mind as a thought, but experiencing wisdom is something else, I think. This happens naturally for everyone, but wanting it to happen can slow it down significantly. The sooner I let go of my expectations and desires, the more I was able to experience. I suppose that also helped me get through the moments of frustration very quickly. I am very glad that I stayed and that I experienced the entire course, I think staying open-minded and eager to learn was the best thing I could have done.

To find out more about Vipassana meditation, you can visit their website at www.dhamma.org and sign up for a retreat of your own at any time. Good luck and let me know if you ever need any help!