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Comment by saiya-jin | Hacker News Reader

one advice - take a backpack, turn off your phone and go around india for couple of months, low key, low budget. either himalaya, or south, or anything in between (varanasi can be a powerful experience). it changed my life for better, much better, and so did for many more people. It doesn't have to be india per se, but it's the most exotic place to western culture out there and supremely huge.

if you look for some enlightenment from behind the keyboard, there will be none.

(on personal level, mountains and travelling to them & around did it for me. it takes time to be in shape to enjoy them and not only suffer up & down, but it's well worth it. most intense moments of my life happened this way. i will die with a smile on my face for having a privilege to experience them)

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It's a good advice, but not everyone needs to run away from something. Sometimes we just have to face ourselves and do a deep introspection on our lives.. I, for myself, find it really hard sometimes to know how I should run my life, or what are my goals. Maybe sometimes there isn't any need to have goals, or maybe my goal is to accomplish every goal so that I empty my goal bucket..

Whatever, I think each one of us are mostly giving bad advices to each other, and the truth is that almost no one knows with certainty what we're doing with our lifes. We just go with the tide, turning left or right when things seems to match what we think we want..

> It's a good advice, but not everyone needs to run away from something.

I prefer to think of it as "running towards"...towards something new, interesting and different.

It's novel but it's an ephemeral novelty. It disappears as soon as you're home and back in your old ways. Better to understand the internal source of dissatisfaction and address it directly.

it was never about running away from anything, I was coming back in 3 months to things and people I left there. It was about adventure, exposing yourself to new situations, cultures, people, everything. every single day. it gives you huge amount of time to see yourself, introspect, experience yourself in all kinds of crazy conditions, and discover that we humans are amazing, strong beings if we try a bit.

also that monetary wealth and happiness are almost mutually exclusive, but that's another topic :)

as for those goals - while hiking in nepal around annapurna, i met american guy, great fella, who unknowingly changed course of my life in many ways. planted some sort of idea-seed in my head. never expected anything like that to happen, there or anywhere. best thing in my life. but for this, you cannot plan nor prepare. for sure, it won't happen while staying at home.

> who unknowingly changed course of my life in many ways. planted some sort of idea-seed in my head. never expected anything like that to happen

Any chance you can expand on this? Would love to read a blog post.

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