This is a post that could’ve maybe been called “Spirituallergies Part 2,” but isn’t

Did you know that one of the possible origins of word “hippie” puts it quite close to the word “woke”? Really. The line of evolution—according to one theory, anyway—started around 1904, moving from “hip” to “hippie” over the course of the decades. “Hip” in that context, of course, was meant in the sense of being informed. Being wise to the reality of the world around you. To the injustice of it all.

You may have known this, but I didn’t until recently. And I didn’t even find out from recently watching the whole of Mad Men (for the first time! In 2022! Wild, I know). No, it was mostly from digging around for some answers as to why the hippies failed. Because, you know, nobody’s ever wondered about that before.

Not to sound glib, and anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m always game to unspool a long rant about corporate influence and lobbyists’ sway and those who just flat-out like to throw their weight around and punch down. Or the values system in the U.S. that probably is why the hippies failed (just a guess). Or the fact that we can’t even get another word like “hip” without a slew of people trying to make it sound derogatory (to, maybe, keep activists from sounding reasonable? Anyone ever consider that? Probably someone has). I mean, yes, there is so much oppressive energy in the air, and I didn’t need to finally finish reading The Dawn of Everything to affirm that, but it certainly helped. (Sidenote: big recommend, 10/10, groundbreaking doesn’t even begin to cover it).

But first. I implied even more waxing rantlike about spiritual bypassing, and that’s where I mean to start. (Will we finish there? Doubtful). The seed of that idea came through a surge of encounters with people quoting Chris McCandless. Yeah, that Chris McCandless. Thus continues the thread of hippie-ness, I suppose.

I admit that, once upon a time, I felt a sort of kinship with Chris McCandless. I was 16 or 17, I’d just read Into the Wild, harbored something of a frustrated sense of wanderlust, and was taken by his story and sense of yearning. Doesn’t hurt that Jon Krakauer spins a yarn like a dream. It was fate, basically, or it would have been if I believed in fate. But it wasn’t that I wanted to mimic McCandless. Well, except in the sense of wanting to simplify my life and see the world and feel a certain freedom. More so, I wanted to understand how he’d leapt from point A to point B—from this idea that the world is terrible, that people treat each other terribly, and thus it follows that it’s time to escape.

Most people I’ve talked to about Into the Wild simply think McCandless stupid. (They just never read the follow-up! That’s all! Alas, if only that’s all it would take.) Or, that was the case, until I spent some time traveling year before last, and I met a number of people who didn’t quite idolize him, but who revered him a bit, and even quoted him sans irony. “Happiness only real when shared,” in particular.

Maybe that’s not quite sans irony…at least, not intended irony. I don’t know if it counts as ironic that they quoted his end-of-life realization that his “adventures” were really just to run away, and what he was seeking could only be found in community, given that these were solo-travelers themselves. But I’ll consider it as such.

Anyway, what people tend to miss about McCandless, even though it’s spelled out quite plainly in Into the Wild, is how intently he was trying to walk away from intense hurt and disillusionment on a personal (and interpersonal) level. Not just in terms of society at large. And why should anyone begrudge him that? I know a great deal of people (myself included) seek to travel and find some modicum of freedom when life circumstances make us feel stuck and small and trapped.

Furthermore, to a degree, you can often find it. The key words being “to a degree.” The problems begin when you hit a point of diminishing returns. When you don’t have the resources to actually take care of yourself, or to keep going. When you don’t have any kind of support, or support system, to give you whatever help you might need. When you don’t have the energy or strength to continue on your own. When freedom, in effect, becomes its opposite.

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Back to the hippies. Let’s put it in simple terms. Once upon a time, as you know, there were hippies, and those hippies sought freedom from the ways of society. They continued to do so into today, and some of them found ways to live as freely as possible within certain confines, and things were well with them. Others tried to defy those confines, and found themselves in all sorts of dire straits, because without these confines, there wasn’t any kind of scaffolding waiting to catch them.

Sounds a little familiar, in light of Into the Wild. Just a bit. But it also may be inaccurate. I mean, it’s an oversimplification, so there’s that, but there’s also the reality that for a lot of people, the hippie movement turned into something more driven by hedonism than true freedom-seeking. So in the way that it’s not entirely fair to maintain a line between “being hip to the truth” and “being a hippie,” it’s perhaps less fair to say that the so-deemed “woke mob” are anywhere close to those who want us all to be “woke to the truth” of injustices.

Beyond that, though, I think it hits upon what Chris McCandless did get right. Because for all of his running-away, there was an element of honest seeking to his travels. Meanwhile, it seems like whatever honest seeking started the hippie movement was lost along the way.

Could that have been because everyone participating in that movement simply followed the crowd? That they just went ahead and did what other people claimed would give them better, more free, happier lives?

This is my guess, and this is the point of everything I’m writing here. In the Atlantic article linked above, that’s what is highlighted. And while it’s only one perspective I do think it’s a sad reality that freedom-seeking is often stifled by the fact that you don’t get there by trying to get there. Same as with happiness. Something we all know, and yet, we all forget it.

What does that mean, though? Is this just another version of a “freedom isn’t free”-esque platitude? Well, maybe, but not really. Freedom is simple—so simple, it often gets overlooked in favor of false versions of it. And that’s why, in turn, it takes work. It takes, dare I say, boundaries.

Ah, yes, that dreaded b-word. Shudder. Scary. What was once a marvelous revelation when I learned about it in counseling has become something of a buzzword—or buzzkill—to many. (Which will probably come out in the wash eventually. Hopefully.) But this doesn’t erase the fact that boundaries do matter, and are useful and important to people. Especially if you want a mindset rooted in spirituality, or in bettering the world around you. Or even if you just want to know what freedom feels like. Whether you’re a love-and-light kind of person, or have a more justice-will-be-served flavor to your spiritual growth, you need groundedness to make things meaningful and real. You need limits to find out what freedom feels and looks like for you.

After all, you can’t give much of anything if you’re constantly letting yourself be drained. And you can’t do much of anything meaningful if you’re trying to do a little bit of everything.

All of this draws back to the truth that freedom isn’t always what it’s painted to look like. And people have these ideas of what it could be, or mean, or feel like, but the problem is that freedom doesn’t start without and work its way in. It’s exactly the opposite. The ideals and ideas of those of us who can imagine and want to see a better world only work if that’s where we begin. It’s a wonderful weird paradox that speaks to the fact that better community does start on an individual level. And stronger individuals are made through real community. Not just the idea of it.

So in light of that, what about “Happiness only real when shared”? Well, sort of. I can see that he found the flip side of his stubborn belief that happiness could only be found through extreme independence. But I don’t know that I necessarily agree with his realization.

This isn’t to say that truth, love, and some semblance of freedom can’t be found with others walking beside you. It (probably) can. But there are limits to this. One big limit, of course, is that the pursuit of anything spiritual has to be chosen and owned in order to really make a difference within oneself. So how can it be owned if it’s just adopted from someone else? How can it truly be yours if you’ve absorbed it from a community or guru? Answer: it really can’t be. This is probably one of the many reasons so many people in my generation have left their respective churches. That they sense this dissonance. It’s a reasonable response.

It might also be why so many people—in my generation and outside of it—have flocked to other kinds of groups that promise community, healing, and a profound kind of insight on life, only to get sucked into something more cult-like and hollow than it originally appeared. They don’t just promise community. They promise an answer. A truth that explains why things are so hard.

Lately I’ve found resources like Healing From Healing, Conspirituality, and Sounds Like a Cult to be so helpful for this very reason. They highlight how groupthink can feel normal and even comforting—even when we know what it is—and how common groups like this have become. And they make sense of the truth that we are all looking for community, but often slip past that in order to seek out something we should be finding within ourselves.

Which brings me to this: Happiness is real when shared, but not only.

(Maybe it’s a little better. Sure. Obviously. But better doesn’t equal real.)

If you want to welcome in the all, you have to welcome in the one. Meaning, yourself.

Maybe loneliness is a so-deemed epidemic right now because it’s normal to not do this—and because people don’t often know how to befriend themselves. (That’s an interesting article, if you click through—basically it says that there’s no way to measure whether or not loneliness is “epidemic” or not, headlines aside. But that doesn’t make it less of a problem. Because it certainly is a problem.)

Aha, yes, another “stop running away from yourself!” kind of message. But it’s forever relevant, isn’t it? Even in a hyper-individualistic culture. Especially in one. Why else would movements or countercultural groups fail to produce the kinds of solidarity we really need? Is it maybe because they’re not rooted in a larger communal context? Because they haven’t resolved what really prompted their desires for freedom on an inner level? Because all of us haven’t done so?

There are a lot of possible ways to look at this. One lens is that it’s pretty ironic a country founded on freedom can’t really find it because it fails to value the collective. Here’s a great, tangible example: it seems so many of the “social” opportunities that grow out of American culture are not actually that. Not really. Like extracurriculars that become competition, or artistic endeavors that turn into commodities. Like social media. It’s weird—social media can lead to real connection. It has that capacity, if you interact with the right person on the right day. But on the whole, it often doesn’t. And it mostly seems to be where a few massive companies take undue advantage of the fact that we all need connection, and tend to lack it.

Sharing an experience or insight via social media can be truly exciting, and even satisfying. But I think that only really works if you’re settled in and okay with yourself. With who you are and how you’re showing up in the world. And with being alone. (Yes, even if you’re an extrovert. God, I was doing so well avoiding this line of discussion. I won’t lie that I really don’t believe in pure introversion and extroversion, for the most part. But I’ll leave it there before heading down another rabbit hole.)

Happiness, perhaps, is only real when it’s yours. Not engineered. Not forced. Not anyone else’s. Yours.

Returning to this concept of staying away from spiritual bypassing, I think it’s worth noting that not everyone feels connected to something greater than themselves. Until they’re in a group. But it still matters that whatever form of spirituality you take, it just has to be yours.
No one else can tell you what it’s meant to look like.

For me, when I was last abroad, that meant leaving behind an environment seemed earthy, spiritual, and “natural” in order to go on a long solo hike that turned out to be way more of those qualities than I ever guessed it could be. It meant more to me, because it was internally resonant, and because I chose it. A choice, mind, that took a great deal of effort and overcoming fear. But, God, was it worth it. And yes, the happiness it gave me was only mine, and it was still very real.

So what could that look like for you?

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