I am a word person. This week’s blog post is a reflection that ran through my mind the entire time I was hiking on the Appalachian Trail on my birthday, March 24. The word “wander” has felt like a bit of a war cry from my soul for the last decade. What feels like a noble effort has much more complicated connotations in culture.
I want to reclaim “wanderer” and make it the badge of honor I believe it is.
What does it mean to wander?
Why do you wander? I’m talking about your mind.
We’ve all heard the terms associated with wandering. Wandering eyes. Wandering mind. Wandering path. Just wandering in general has a connotation.
People with focus don’t wander. People who are on the right path aren’t wandering. They know where they are, right?
Wandering is associated with aimlessness. It is a pointless, painful activity with no sense of any reward at the theoretical “end” only endured by willful idiots. Smarter folks know what a waste it is to wander.
Please forgive me while I go full English teacher right now, but that’s where we’re going. Buckle in.
If you weren’t a kid who read the dictionary and the Alabama Criminal Code (like I did) as vacation reading, I hope that you at least were amused by the thesaurus.
The thesaurus includes both synonyms (similar words) and antonyms (words that mean the opposite). Think of the thesaurus as a thermometer for your word choices. It can help you choose both simpler and more complex words. It gives you a reference for what the opposite of that word is and what it means.
The thesaurus is far superior to the dictionary in my world. I have always felt this way. The thesaurus gives us a deeper look into the ways words and our understandings of words are interconnected…. or not. Sometimes having a similar word to compare your current word against helps you distinguish what is the best word to use.
Please, for the love, play around with the thesaurus next time you are writing anything – a journal entry, a text message, an email to your boss. Words matter. Choose them wisely.
What’s in a word?
Some other words with “wander” as a root are: Wanderer, Wandering, Wanders
Here’s what Thesaurus.com says are synonyms for “wander”:
amble
cruise
Drift - to move aimlessly (verb)
Float - to lie on the surface (v.)
Hike - a journey by foot (noun) or to walk for recreation (v.)
meander
Ramble - an aimless walk (n.) or to travel aimlessly (v.)
Roam - to wander about (v.)
saunter
Straggle - to stray away from a goal (v.)
Stray - abandoned (adjective), to deviate, make an error or get lost (v.),
stroll
traipse
Trek - a long journey (n.), to take a long trip (v.)
The bolded and defined words are the ones that most resonated with me when I think about what it means to “wander” (verb) or to be a “wanderer” (noun).
The verb is the action and the noun is the physical, real thing in the world–be it a thing, animal or person. To “be” a “wanderer” has a whole other connotation, that to me, as a person obsessed with words and the way we use them to make meaning of this shitshow called life, is a connotation worth addressing.
To be a wanderer is to be someone who has traveled so aimlessly that people notice. It’s a pattern of behavior. Here are the synonyms for “wanderer.” (The same rules apply as above)
Nomad - a person who aimlessly goes from place to place (n.)
Vagabond - someone who is unsettled or without a home or regular work who gets by through begging (n.)
adventurer
beachcomber
Bum - a beggar (n.)
Explorer - a trailblazer, someone who marks the path ahead (n.)
floater
gad
gadabout
itinerant
pilgrim
ranger
roamer
rover
That term “pilgrim” makes me think about every Christian middle schooler’s most dreaded reading assignment: Pilgrim’s Progress.
I personally loved the book, and so much of the imagery from it has shaped how I view myself, God and spirituality in general. Not to spoil the story, but Pilgrim’s Progress is the story of a good hearted but kinda dumb person who ends up in the most frustrating of situations along his journey, mostly due to his own mistakes and temptations. It’s a metaphor for humanity’s relationship with God, and I found it revealing and amusing.
More about the story another day, but today is about what it means to be a pilgrim, a wanderer, a bum, an explorer and a vagabond.
All of those terms so beautifully describe what I understand it means to BE a “wanderer.” I wear “wanderer” as a badge, despite the not so favorable connotations surrounding the word and its meaning. Does anyone really want to be considered a vagrant or a bum? No. Those people are given very little time or consideration in our culture. They are the “leftovers” or the ones that natural selection took care of. In the American mind, to be untethered to your identity or place is tantamount to crime. In some places it’s literally a crime to camp in public or to even sleep in your car.
Why can’t you keep your shit together, you bum?
Make up your mind already. You can’t swim in every pool. Pick one and settle down.
Why aren’t you ever satisfied with what you have?
These questions, some of which you may have been asked at some point in your life, stem from a place of discomfort. Folks just can’t understand why you aren’t comfortable in the pretty little shadowbox they fit inside. This statement is not a knock at them, but a simple observation about what’s happening. Think of it as a reason why you feel so offended or confused by questions like that.
You are not required to remain as dumb and inexperienced as you were when you were born. You were meant to explore, to thrive, to find new ways of doing things and in doing so make the world better. But what happens when all that striving feels so empty and… aimless.
Your exploration becomes wandering. And here you are, reading my blog.
Meaningless! Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless!
I struggle to not be a nihilist. It’s the biggest and most influential voice of evil in my head. I’ve fluctuated between nihilism and zeal for most of my life. The nihilism bits have been brief, powerful and terrifying.
I will never forget laying on the floor of my extra bedroom in April 2020 and staring out at the warm spring sunshine and cursing it for daring to be so beautiful in a time of literal doom. I had been staring down the barrel of the panic caused by the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic for a month and I was exhausted. I felt like all my evolutionary survival tactics were in place. Those tactics included laying on the ground and staring at the ceiling motionless, hoping that the metaphorical monster that lay just outside my door would consume me if I wasn’t as still and scared as it wanted me to be.
My husband had lost his job, and was stuck in there with me and misery and fear. I knew either a layoff or a reduction in pay was coming my way. I held my breath every morning when I opened my phone to check my work email. Eventually the pay cuts came and so did my disillusionment with *everything* around me.
Nihilism can make you super aimless. If there is no point to anything, why try anything new or different? I had never so deeply identified with the book of Ecclesiastes, in the Old Testament of the Bible. There, the author practically wails on paper “Meaningless! Meaningless! Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless!”
I can’t describe the ways in which the pandemic slung giant, Buddy-the-Elf level snowballs directly into my unassuming face. I know many people had a similar experience during the pandemic. My existing anxieties coupled with the sheer volume of shit (to put it politely) going on around the world was a lot to process. Oh, and I was working as a journalist, which really does give you a whole other perspective on the world and how it’s crumbling around you.
I was assigned to a team of financial reporters, and my heart literally sank into my gut and dissolved as I reported on and wrote about the current and impending financial disaster that was sure to happen in the wake of the pandemic. It was only April 2020, and the financial world was already screaming about the damage done.
I’m not an economist, and I didn’t continue reporting on this topic beyond Fall 2020. I also haven’t done any analysis on how my reporting has held up. I share that not to give you financial journalism, but to just be really honest about what I was seeing in my real life and in the lives of *literally everyone I knew.* Then, I was elbow-deep in reporting, data and conversations about these issues for 40 hours/week.
Summer 2020 Anna was frazzled and stressed to the absolute maximum. The world and everyone’s lives around me was crumbling. Nothing made sense. Bless my not-quite-baked 25-year-old brain. I can’t blame myself for feeling as lost and disillusioned as I did during the most intense days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Soon I wondered what was real. I didn’t want to believe anyone because no one seemed trustworthy. It seems to me nearly every major institution of our culture has been infected with some sort of corruption–somewhere–and by trusting those institutions, I was opening myself to immense risk.
Walking it out (literally)
I’ve wandered in this wilderness of doubt, disbelief and nihilism for the last 4 years. I’ve found some friends along the way. The best balm for this emotional torment has been a different type of wandering–the aimless walking in the woods.
The only point to hiking the Appalachian Trail is just to do it. It’s not really the best mode of transportation, while you can travel between many major cities on the east coast via the AT. There’s just something so deeply human, so natural, so meditative and healing like hiking for the sole reason of hiking. That’s how hiking the AT and running ultramarathons feel to me.
I’ve often had people (mostly family) ask me when I’m going to stop running ultras or when enough races is enough races. I don’t know the answer to that question. My need to go into the woods with no purpose at all except to use my body to travel through the trees is a bottomless pit. It is never satisfied. There is no diminishing return in nature. There is no diminishing return in wandering through the woods, for my soul, at least.
It’s not so great for my wallet or my ability to keep a clean house. My slowly healing pessimistic, dark heart needs to be a little aimless.
A note:
Thank you for reading this week’s edition of Annalytical. If you enjoyed this entry, please consider subscribing. Subscribing is free, but there is also a paid option if you really like what you’re reading.