Falkor is anchored in front of the Congreso Central—the central indigenous council of Guna Yala in Porvenir. On board are two representatives from the Congreso who are ceremoniously signing my charter permit, walking me through all the prohibited activities (they span from spearfishing to windsurfing and everything in between).

Up comes what looks like a fisherman in an ulu—a wooden canoe carved out of a big log. “I don’t need fish right now,” I preemptively utter, as the bureaucrats on board interrupt me. “Wait! You have to check out his produce first.”

I look over my railguard, down on the fisherman who proudly signals his catch: two bags of weed, neatly presented next to each other. I politely refuse, and then comes the sales pitch: “I have 500 pounds of marihuana in my home—over on that island right there!” The fisherman explains and points in the direction of the drug den. “I got it from a drug-dealer friend of mine!”

These islands overflow with cheap weed and Colombian cocaine; the latter may be bought for one dollar a gram. Ca. two hundred times cheaper than its street value in Europe and the US. The self-proclaimed pirates on monohulls and catamarans love it.

And so do the fishermen.

The fantasy and the real

In the last few months, I've struck a balance between hustling for cash and enjoying Guna Yala’s dazzling reefs, coconut-island bonanza, castaway pirates, and stereotypically laid-back, content-with-little-material-possession natives.

How do I account for my encounter with Guna Yala without resorting to clichés, when the time I’ve spent here feels like a real-world romantic postcard?

But it’s 2026, and I am neither Jacques Cousteau nor Thor Heyerdahl—I’m a former party queen from Barcelona, and my Guna friends are not Robinson Crusoe’s savages, waiting to teach me how to survive.

Cocodrilo Jones

Mid-July. I’m about to bid the last group of queer expeditioners farewell after nine days of sailing to Guna villages, hiking through the rainforest, and freediving on the reefs.

Gaston, an Argentine diver who has decided to cement his anchor to the ocean bed next to Canirdup, or Green Island to us foreigners, has trained us well. I am finally starting to feel comfortable in the water—like a dolphin, I like to imagine, as I jump in the water and gracefully swim toward the shore, maybe 50 meters from my boat, as the sardines swim.

Halfway across, I unceremoniously pull my boxer shorts off and squeeze out a morning turd. As I turn my head left to observe my log float into the horizon, another log appears some 15 meters away. I focus my gaze—is it not? Oh my God! It is! A BIG FUCKING CROCODILE.

“Auxilio!” I scream at the top of my lungs while my mind replays recent conversations about this apex predator. Gone are my calm demeanours, so carefully staged in front of my guests when I put my captain’s hat on.

The crocodile dives, and for the next 30 seconds, or maybe it’s more, I swim towards shore as my life depends on it. I am not dying today—those aren’t main character vibes and would ruin the plot.

A minute later, as I’m panting my lungs out, naked, on a log, at the shore, Gaston comes running through the woods.

“What happened, hermano?”

“I’m never swimming again.”

Multispecies animosity

Later that day I meet Giovanni, a fisherman from the nearby village of Rio Azucar. I tell him about my brush with death. “If he was hungry, he would have eaten you,” Giovanni says. “Crocodiles don’t eat their prey immediately,” he adds. “They can’t chew, so they kill them, store them, and let their body decompose.”

What a wonderful image to ruminate on at night.

Later that week, news arrives from Rio Azucar: neighbours have killed a big crocodile that had been paying the village frequent visits. Just a month earlier, Pikachu—one of the village dogs—had been eaten to his owners’ dismay.

And for a brief second, the urban environmentalist and multispecies intellectual in me withdraws, and the castaway islander appears: Fuck yes—I’m glad they caught the cunt!

Full disclosure: I only care about football once every four years, but when I do, it is the only sport that can move me to tears and scream like a caveman.

This year, the greatest sporting event in the world came with extra excitement. Would my two nations—Norway and Argentina—meet in a World Cup semi-final? Malik, my travel companion, had asked me who I’d root for should the two teams face each other, and I brushed it off as purely hypothetical.

Norway had not qualified for a World Cup in 28 years, and never made it past an eliminatory match. And I was convinced that the mad passion I’ve felt when Argentina enters the field was solely attributable to my Latin American genes.

But this World Cup was the World Cup of the underdogs, and suddenly Malik’s question had to be taken seriously.

Beyond my ambiguous loyalty, the madness that the Norwegian supporters brought to the cup—and the world—has made me reconsider the myth of northern composure and southern effusion.

Maybe Norwegians and Argentines are not so different after all.

I’ve watched the games in the villages and the deserted islands of Guna Yala, and to my pleasant surprise, the Guna were (mostly) either Argentina fans or Norway supporters.

Messi or Haaland.

Their personalities are relentlessly scrutinized, compared, and celebrated. Their lives are stories of triumph and failure, hubris and humility, the rise and potential fall from grace. They awaken strong emotions and stir something deep in us—a collective effervescence in the words of Durkheim—that has the power to bring us together.

And perhaps that is why football teams and their players don’t belong to a single nation and for sure not to a private corporation.

As a sport that stirs passion across borders and cultures and makes people from around the world go wild, it has become one of the most important arenas for global unity. Its social and cultural importance is too big for it to be sold to the highest bidder. Last week, that became clear to everyone but Infantino.

Through this journey, one of the scenes that has repeated everywhere I’ve been is the football fields packed with children. So, in a tribute to football, these images are meant to remind you of the impact of the game beyond the big stadiums.

Michael, Diego, Malik, and I have brushed the sweat off our foreheads after a long morning as engine mechanics and gotten our (mostly) gay asses to the traditional chicha celebration in Rio Cidra, one of the many island-villages in Guna Yala.

Chicha is a fermented corn drink and the name of teenage Guna girls' coming-of-age celebration. It’s a festive event—for the village, not for show—and Lisa, our host, has warned me that we are not allowed to take pictures, so I have left the camera behind on the boat to avoid temptation.

Our engine malfunctions, delaying our arrival at the party, and all the chicha has already been devoured by the time we arrive. The main street, a narrow path between large bamboo houses, is lively. Women dressed in traditional mola (meticulously hand-sewn dresses). Men relaxing in plastic armchairs outside their homes and small shops. Children running between the buildings.

The kid in me, the one raised on exotic images of foreign cultures, feels like he’s stepping into a different time and space. The grown-up knows that such a gaze creates distance and reduces the complexity of communities that are steeped in contradictions.

Like when Antonio, who picked us up at the dock, says that photos are okay if we pay. One of the guys asks a group of women if we can snap a shot in exchange for a few bucks. The proposal causes debate among the women. Some of them are notably bothered and get ready to leave when their friends concede to the request.

It gets awkward.

For a second, we’re the gringos with money and they the natives, both parties reduced to stereotypes, and everyone feels it.

Our queer kin

We’re here to meet Lisa and her friends, and village life is not a tourist attraction.

I’ve gotten to know Lisa a week earlier. She’s a local guide and takes sailors and tourists in the area for hikes in the mainland rainforest. Picking my crew and me, three cute big-city gays, up at our boat, she had pointed at the massive pride flag waving on our mast and enthusiastically noted that we’re all LGBTQ.

Turns out, Lisa was born a boy but raised a girl, as custom is among the Guna, when parents realise that their children are different from the rest. Despite the geographic distance, this makes us kin, and Lisa quickly tells me that she wants to introduce me to her group of friends.

A week later, in Rio Cidra, she meets us outside the chicha-house. For the time being, the house is only accessible to women, but Lisa grabs me firmly by the hand and pulls me inside to meet the rest of the lot.

We are, differences aside, from the same community.

And also, who cares if a gay guy walks into an all-women’s party? None of my girlfriends, that’s for sure.

Navigating the challenges of tourism

Guna Yala is one of Latin America’s oldest autonomous indigenous territories, and over the course of the last few decades, the region has been transforming at a rapid pace, with the expansion of infrastructure and tourism reshaping traditional ways of life.

Having spent the last decade researching the impact of tourism in remote areas, I have mixed feelings about stepping into the role as a foreign tourism provider on indigenous land.

In the archipelago, sailors are the only outsiders who are allowed to do business, and even then, strict bureaucratic rules apply.

I’ve taken care to play by the book, but respecting local rules doesn't automatically give me an ethical green light. The complexity of the relations between foreigners and locals in the context of Central America’s colonial history has cautioned me to think deeply about my own role as a white bro selling sailing experiences in Guna Yala.

Importantly, while as a nomad, this place is home right now, I am fully aware that I am, first and foremost, still a guest.

Being a good guest

What does it mean to be a good guest? I ask Max, who, for the time being, is my guest—on board Falkor. It’s a welcome role inversion after spending weeks in Max’s campsite on Green Island.

“For the Guna, being a good guest means offering help with whatever is needed,” he reflects. “And asking for permission.”

On Green Island, everyone is welcome, and Max is reluctant to charge. It is not the vibe he wants to create.

His beach campsite is usually full of hippies, slow travellers, and Guna families who come to spend the day. Max has built a simple hut there, with the help of a few long-term guests—travellers who meant to stay a week or two, and ended up staying six months plus.

Max’s answer makes me reflect on the lessons I’ve learned after a year of travelling through Central America. The Maya, too, place permission and reciprocity at the center of their relational ethics.

It is miles away from the “it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission” that I’ve encountered elsewhere in Latin America. As a rebellious reaction to an impossible bureaucracy, doing things without permission might be understandable and by the looks of it, the Guna live by this maxim as well. But as a cultural rhetoric, it still rubs me the wrong way.

In Central America, asking for permission is applied in the broadest of senses: among the Maya, it is neither requested from nor granted by a state bureaucracy, but rather by the spirit world and land—through rituals or in direct interaction with the people who are affected by your actions.

The locals navigate these tensions too, and I’ve met resistance to Guna central authorities even among the public servants who are supposed to enforce the local rules. “You shouldn’t have said that you’re doing charters,” some Guna have told me. Most of them agree that the steep taxes on charter permits line the pockets of their leadership, instead of returning to the community.

The Guna, too, complain about taxes.

And from what I can tell, what they’d like the most is for their foreign guests to offer a helping hand in their veggie patches, bond over a can of beer, work shoulder to shoulder, and support their local businesses: to take part in their communities, not just as guests, but as friends and neighbours.

And maybe, if there’s a deeper lesson here, it’s this: an ethics for the good life on a planet that is inevitably shared is not just about being a good guest.

It’s about sitting down for a meal, together, realising that we’re all kin.

Out of sync

I’m a boat person now. It took me eighteen months, two continents, and a broken engine, but I got here.

Since I left Barcelona a year and a half ago, every decision that has extended this journey felt like a crossroads. Panama or Guatemala? Add another year to your trip. Guna Yala or the Pacific? Plus two.

When your itinerary is shaped by the seasons, a month-long delay almost automatically multiplies by ten, maybe more. If you expect things to run smoothly while sailing, you’re almost guaranteed to spiral into chronic despair.

But slowing down isn’t as easy as the lifestyle gurus claim.

Budgets must be remade. Work must be created or found. Longer—much longer—periods of what may feel like isolation, silently accepted. And the discomforts of living on a small, humid boat in the tropics (full disclosure: it is not always a dream) must be endured.

Going all in

In my case, the mental toll of constantly pushing through unforeseen challenges and winging it financially convinced me that if I want to enjoy the journey I’m on (I do), slowing down is a prerequisite.

If you embarked on this as a time-out from what you imagined was your real life—the life that you would build your identity and future around—turning what was supposed to be a seven-month adventure into an open-ended, multi-year pursuit can feel painful and riddled with the anxiety of “when will I get there.”

Yes, I know that going all in can be a mixed bag—it requires sacrificing an old identity—but being halfway in and halfway out is far worse. A hard pill to swallow in an age where there’s always somewhere else I should rather be, something else I should rather do.

You know this feeling. You’ve been halfway in and halfway out of something for years.

Releasing the fantasy of arrival

So this is what I’ve done: I took a pause. I put the boat on land, jumped on a plane, and went back home. I slept in a regular apartment. I rode the subway. I saw the dentist.

And I had my eureka moment.

The life I left behind, the life that’s waiting once this journey is over? It will still be there five years from now.

What changed? I realised that the timeline that I set from the comfort of my port of call made no sense anymore. I’m so deep into this adventure now that deciding to arrive in Australia within six months or six years seems like a pointless exercise. Cause a) there’s no more savings to hold on to, and b) once I’m there, then what? I have no clue.

And now, back on what I still lovingly refer to as “the fucking boat”, I’m ready for the deep dive into real boat life. The one that can only truly start when you’re not focusing on when it will end. The one that hones the rhythms of the process—of the time it takes to fix an engine, raise the money, do the paperwork, and wait for the winds to change.

First impression: for the first time in a long time, I’m able to sleep through the night.

Granted, last night I woke up worried about all the things that can go south as I prepare to welcome guests on board in a few weeks. But it was not the crippling anxiety that has accompanied me on past legs of this journey, as my cash balance has dwindled and arrival dates have been pushed further and further ahead.

It takes the time that it takes

Perhaps, the lesson is that a prerequisite for emotional wellbeing is honing the rhythms of whatever process you’re in right now. Accepting that “it takes the time that it takes”—the exact words that my psychic uttered almost two years ago, as I was planning this journey.

It took a while for them to really land.

But over the course of the last year, sailing has taught me a valuable lesson about tempo. Try to rush the process? Instant suffering. Guaranteed. Accepting the times set by your environment? Sometimes hard, yes, as expectations might need to be adjusted, but when you surrender to acceptance? Oh, the sweet relief of air in your lungs. Kinda like practicing free-diving.

German sociologist Hartmut Rosa has built his theory of happiness around the concept of resonance.

He argues that modernity operates through a structural compulsion to speed up the pace of technology, accumulation, yes, even of life itself. The problem isn’t just that speed makes us busy, as the lifestyle gurus will gladly tell. No, the problem is that it makes the world appear mute and unresponsive.

Living life at an accelerated tempo disconnects us from the rhythms of our surroundings. It makes it almost impossible to cultivate a living and responsive relationship to the world, where things actually reach you, and you reach back.

For Rosa, the secret to the good life is resonance—making time and space for a constant back and forth with our environment: with people, places, and the rhythms of life.

In other words, embracing the role you’re currently playing might just be the prerequisite for presence, and presence, as it seems, is the prerequisite for a life well lived.

Stepping into The Identity

For me, slowing down was only possible after I decided that right now, this journey is my life. There’s nowhere else I should be. There’s not a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow—the gold is in the colours painted across the sky. In the pursuit of a dream. In the experiences you accumulated along the way.

You know this. It’s commonsensical, I’m well aware. But we still need the reminder.

I got mine when I finally accepted that I’m a boat person now. And that even if I’m far from home, I do have a community. My fellow sailors. Free-spirited hippies and freaks who have gone through many of the same experiences I have.

Having Falkor on land in Panamarina, a small family-run establishment in the middle of the Panamanian rainforest, has offered a space to bond over broken engines, malfunctioning solar panels, delayed travel plans, financial hurdles, and impossible heat.

I’ve met a group of people who live life at a slow pace: the DIY American who’s been refitting his boat for the last two years, the YouTube couple who’s been sailing for five. In the afternoons, we’ve all come together around the fire to throw some food on the barbecue and play a round of bocce. We’ve shared stories of lightning strikes and broken rudders. And we’ve helped each other out with boats that act like whiny little brats.

It has made me realise that I’m not the odd one out, not fitting in—I fit, but in a different box than the one I belonged to before.

This journey has taught me that slowing down isn’t a lifestyle choice—it’s a surrender to rhythms beyond our control. And that the moment you stop fighting the tempo of whatever process you’re in, you stop experiencing it as a prison and start experiencing it as a life.

Where are you still halfway in? What timeline are you fighting that you set from a life and identity that no longer exists?

Where could your life dramatically improve, if only you went all in?

The first sunrays after the storm

After months of effort to ground this project and weeks of long work days in the boatyard, this weekend brought a moment of rest.

I was testing the dinghy and outboard engine on a trip through the mangroves when I decided to turn off the motor, jump in the water, and let myself float with the currents, while I listened to the sound of the ocean breaking on the reefs just out of sight.

For the first time in a long time, the weight of responsibilities was lifted off my shoulders, my mind went still, and the comments on my Instagram feed were forgotten.

And in that moment, I couldn’t help but wonder: Is this a time out, or am I finally checking in?

I like to think of a family—your birth family or chosen one—as a group of souls who have decided to help each other evolve. Sometimes through friction, sometimes through support. Sometimes, it seems like we return to our families only to regress to our 15-year-old selves; sometimes, we return to notice just how much we all have grown.

Luckily, perhaps, the latter was the case when I reunited with the fam for the first time in a year.

Landing in the cold, windswept coast of western Norway after finding myself walking barefoot through Central America showed me what my family has meant. And it made me question some of the assumptions I have carried about my homeland.

Norway is a society shaped by the egalitarian relations of rural communities.

Coming home to the cold shores where I learned to sail allowed me to reflect on how the open farmlands battered by the North Sea, the steep fjords and snow-covered mountains that rise behind them, and the introverted and well-mannered people who live here have shaped my family and me.

Norwegian Utopia

Growing up, I thought of Norway as the epitome of the modern world: a model society where people are equal, solidarity is institutionalised, and common folks have a real say in how their society is governed.

But during my short family visit last month, something had changed. Perhaps it was the time spent away from home that taught me to see what I'd taken for granted.

Travelling has made me reflect on how family, in societies where the state is there for you when things get hard, is often reduced to a project of self-realisation: something to get or have but not to rely on.

We moderns mostly agree that independence is something to strive for, but what happens when a society becomes so fixated on every man being an island that we forget how to show up for each other? What do we lose when family is reduced to its ceremonial function? To a set of background actors in our holiday pictures?

My modern family

In my family, we have often pushed each other to grow through friction. It has often felt challenging and lacked the feel-good component that you might wish for.

Usually, the friction is expressed in those small details charged with meaning.

You know exactly what I’m talking about: your brother scowled at you when you asked them to pass you a loaf at the table, or your dad made a comment about a recent global event that didn’t land well. And the truce is broken.

This time, it was about access to the car, but not really.

Really, it was about being seen—about having different needs acknowledged, about being allowed to take up space, about feeling supported. The car was just a placeholder for pent-up emotions, released in the form of a verbal duel of “you did this” and “you did that’s.” Sound familiar?

Once the dust had settled, we did something that we hadn’t done before. We had what I can best describe (in contemporary healing lingo) as an “integration circle.”

“Maybe our ‘thing’ as a family is that we never give up,” my mum commented.

Maybe my mum is right. There’s value in trying with intent, at the risk of getting stuck in old patterns that hurt. This journey back home, however, showed me that while we might still trip over the same stone, we have also grown.

In the past, we might all have fended for ourselves and expected the rest to do the same. Or perhaps, we have been so busy with our own struggles that we have failed to see the things that are going on in the lives of the rest of the lot.

But over the last year, our family has come together in a way that feels meaningful and new. We have supported each other in the face of adversity, and for the first time in a long time, we have felt like a team.

Old patterns are hard to shake off, but lo and behold, something has softened.

Collective individualism

During a moment of quiet reflection in the icy sea breeze near my brother’s home, I reasoned that some of the friction must come from the mixing of two worlds: of Latin American passion with Northern European pragmatism.

And I remembered something I learned as a student of anthropology: that Norwegian society is structured around something called collective individualism. With a strong state bureaucracy that fulfills many family functions, Norwegians rely less on each other for safety.

Bluntly put (and I might get some pushback here), if you’re broke and lonely in Norway, you don’t go to your family for support—you go to the doctor for antidepressants and social services for financial assistance.

This system, which Europeans refer to as the welfare state, is often seen as a utopic ideal that all modern societies should strive for. And don’t get me wrong, I do not envy the people who live in societies where a hospital stay is cause for bankruptcy.

But it has also made family optional. It has reduced family from necessity to preference and outsourced care to institutions.

It has made us lonelier.

Relying on each other

The biggest lesson from my trip back home was this: no amount of bureaucracy, welfare solutions, or policy interventions can replace the bonds with family members who, for better or worse, are here to help us grow.

We might not have figured it all out, my family and I. But for the first time in a long time, we're trying together. Maybe that's what solidarity actually looks like—not a policy, not a principle.

Just this: not giving up.

Over the past five years, I’ve sailed from Norway to Panama, exploring different coastlines and documenting how people live with and through their environments.

Of all the places I’ve travelled, Guna Yala stands apart.

Located on the northern shores of Panama, it is an autonomous region made up of hundreds of small coral islands, where the Guna continue to maintain a strong degree of political and cultural independence.

Across the archipelago, life follows rhythms that are closely tied to the sea, the land, and community life.

Knowledge is shared through practice. Decisions are made collectively. Value is often grounded in relationships rather than accumulation.

It’s not a place you simply pass through.

It’s a place that invites attention.

Sustainable cultural travel

In the coming months, I’m inviting a small group (max 3 people) to join me on a 9-day sailing journey through the region.

This is not a typical sailing trip. It’s a slower, more intentional way of moving—where the focus shifts from covering distance to engaging with the places we arrive in, the people we meet, and the experience of being there.

We will sail between islands, spend time in Guna communities with local guides, snorkel along reef systems, and explore parts of the rainforest.

This journey draws on my work as a documentary photographer and anthropologist, and is designed for those who are interested in questions of travel, ethics, and how we relate to different ways of living.

It may resonate particularly with photographers, filmmakers, and others working creatively, but it’s open to anyone who feels drawn to this kind of experience.

What to expect

We move slowly and keep things simple.

We aim to travel in a way that is attentive to both environmental and social impact, working with local guides and contributing to local economies along the way.

We will:

• fish and eat with local families

• learn freediving and explore reef systems

• travel between islands under sail

• spend time in communities with local guidance

• create space for conversation, reflection, and experience

Life on the boat is simple. It’s warm, salty, and close. We share space, meals, and rhythm.

In return, you step into a way of travelling that is difficult to access through conventional routes.

How you can join

This is an intentional expedition for those looking for depth, perspective, and a different way of moving through the world.

If this speaks to you, fill out the sign-up form where you can let me know what month you are available, and I’ll share more details.

Sign-up form

I’m not looking to fill spots—I’m looking for the right people.

I’ll be confirming the first group over the coming weeks.

I’m back in Europe after a year of sailing, biking, and travelling for a brief pause before journeying on with Falkor and crew.

Back in Barcelona, with the Barcelona gays, my old tribe, my dysfunctional family, my very human community.

When I decided to leave the big-city life two years ago, I was in a ditch—emotionally and spiritually. I had taken the party lifestyle to its extreme. At least to the point where the pain outweighed the short-term relief of escape.

Being back has made me reflect on how far I’ve come, where I’m still growing, and if I could have gotten the same results without blowing up my old life and sailing into the sunset.

Comfort is the enemy of growth, and not all stress is bad

First conclusion: my nervous system, which has been on alert 24/7 during the last months of sailing, can finally relax. Sleeping through the night without checking if the anchor is holding. Catching the subway without worrying about engine failure. Hiding in a café while it rains instead of riding out a storm at the helm.

All of this more than compensates for the chaos of the city.

Truth is, not even the most influential advocates of the simple life in the outdoors—like Henry Thoreau or Fridtjof Nansen—permanently abandoned the urban. For all their insistence on the healing power of pristine nature, they always returned to the city’s social fabric and comforts.

And so, it seems, do I.

But when I do, I notice something: that pushing past my comfort zone out at sea has changed my baseline. Once the storm is over, mundane problems feel a little less serious and a little more… mundane.

The Stoic thesis that friction builds resilience seems to hold. Our biggest leaps of growth take place outside the comfort zone.

And maybe I’m stating the obvious here. But we need a reminder that when grown-ups with Peter Pan syndrome throw themselves into reckless adventures, it might not be such a stupid idea.

The mean little voice inside our heads

Through this journey, I’ve often fallen prey to the trap of comparison and negative self-talk: while my peers are raising kids, building careers, and paying down mortgages, I’m pouring my energy, life savings, and time into an activity that some might say is just another kind of escapism.

A hedonistic pursuit of some romanticised idea of adventure. The irresponsible, privileged, narcissistic indulgence of a middle-aged guy who wants life to be “fun”.

That’s the fearful voice that wants to keep me small, speaking, by the way. The voice instilled in us by a society obsessed with material pursuits. The one that tells us that accumulation equals success equals social standing equals safety.

Even if I’m well aware that I’m not the failure this voice wants me to believe that I am, I just haven’t been able to shut it up—especially not out at sea.

Long-distance cruising has felt like a marathon of negative self-talk.

But returning to Europe has shaken me out of excessive identifications with materialist metrics of success. Why? Well, for once, cause being back in an old environment shows me all the areas where I have grown: I’m calmer when finances are tight, I don’t indulge in escapism like I used to, I’m OK with leaving the party early, and I’m OK with leaving the party alone. I’m OK with not having a fancy job to prop up my confidence. And I’m OK with not knowing what the future will hold.

Finally, I’m starting to viscerally feel that success in life might be more related to spiritual growth—to the way we show up for ourselves and others.

Is this what detoxing feels like?

Navigating challenges together

My body is catching up with what my mind already knew, and an important reason is that I’m no longer comparing myself to the fantasy version of other people’s lives.

You see, being far out at sea and imagining life back home is not so different from lying on the couch and imagining life at sea—our projections of others are usually rosy idealisations while we reserve the demanding realities of the human experience to our own immediate, minuscule universe.

But here’s the truth: right now, we’re all in the pressure cooker.

The fantasy of limitless abundance and individual freedom has created expectations that are impossible to fulfill, especially when we try to live them out in a system geared towards profit, not purpose. We’re all chasing some fantasy life that simply does not exist. Or, in the very few cases where it does, lacks the emotional tone we’ve been told that it has.

Right now, the world is full of new home-owners weighed down by debt, newly weds discovering that they married the wrong partner, and successful entrepreneurs on the verge of burnout. The perfect life does not exists.

Realising we’re not alone in our struggles can bring instant relief.

The power of community

And that brings me to the second reason why returning to Barcelona has felt like the right medicine at the perfect moment—because of the way the city has welcomed me home.

I’ve been hosted, fed, and cared for by friends who feel like family.

I’ve shared tender moments, received cuddles, and had deep conversations with people I love.

Coming home has shown me that the power of community trumps the weight of broken expectations. When we’re with our friends, when we feel seen, held, and supported, it is the biggest balm for the soul.

And it can soothe even the most dysregulated nervous system—as long as we can look past what life hasn’t given us, and notice what’s already there.

Perhaps happiness is not about choosing between adventure and belonging. Perhaps it lives somewhere in the tension between the two.

In any case, thank you Barca, for being a home <3

When I set sail across the Atlantic Ocean, I imagined the Caribbean as a natural paradise full of postcard beaches where Falkor, my 34-foot sailboat, would sway under the sun.

Instead, I’ve encountered challenging weather, polluted coves, and enormous hotels on what was once pristine shores. That is, until I arrived in San Blas.

A secret paradise

As I was enjoying this morning on anchor, a dolphin swam right past my boat.

The guys on the boat next to ours saw it too, and in less than a minute, we were a small group of sea-hippies paddling towards the patch of water where the silvery smooth tail fin of the dolphin last appeared, on our paddle boards and in our dinghies.

We were too late. The dolphin was already halfway out at sea, so instead the guys boarded Falkor for a morning mate, and then we went spearfishing by the reef.

And finally, a year after buying my speargun in Spain, I caught my first prey: a parrot fish with bright colours and sharp teeth. Not a very impressive catch, but just enough to awaken my primal, caveman instincts.

Now I know that if I ever need to, I can survive in the wild—the wet dream of every man transiting his midlife crisis.

On this particular day, however, I surrendered to my old identity, and bought a freshly caught tuna from the Guna ladies who came to our boat on a cayuco, offering a much more impressive catch as well as their traditional mola tapestry—layered, handwoven textiles that are only produced here.

What if the cliche is true?

We sailors that cruise these waters might be a bunch of romantics, but where most of us modern folks practice the simple life on occasion, as a feel-good pasttime, the Guna native to the 360-something coral islands that compose the San Blas archipelago, fully embody the cliche of simple living in harmony with nature.

When I spoke with a friend in Barcelona in the afternoon, as I obsessed over our encounters with sailors and Guna alike, he interrupted me. “Let me guess—they live simple lives but are happy nonetheless?” He was being sarcastic.

“Well… yes,” I awkwardly replied. I knew it sounded like a cheesy cliche, but the weeks I’ve spent in this region have reminded me of the value of simplicity.

Of course there are problems here too, like everywhere else—cocaine smugglers roam this region, economic opportunites are scarce, and life in a small and remote community means adapting to the challenges of village life.

But also, the people we met seemed content. They had been to the city and lived here by choice, not obligation.

The original affluent society

For Marshall Sahlins, one of the great anthropological minds, hunter-gatherers were “the original affluent society”—financially poor, spiritually rich. Similar to the Epicureans, he argued that affluence is achieved by desiring little, not by having a lot.

When the Spanish conquistadors colonised Colombia, the ancestors of today’s Guna migrated to the Caribbean shores of Panama’s Darien region to evade colonisation. They settled on the islands, as these were practically free of the disease-carrying bugs of the nearby jungle.

Here, they have established a self-governed society where decisions are deliberated collectively through local congresses, open to all community members.

In 1925, the Guna revolution, one of the earliest and most successful Indigenous autonomy movements in Latin America, asserted regional independence from Panama.

To this day, people here live mainly from the resources offered by the land and the ocean—coconut, jams, plantain, lobster, fish, and game. Family homes are built with materials from the forests and with the help of neighbours. It is not a moneyless society, but it has largely remained sheltered from the tentacles of consumer capitalism, and my nervous system feels it.

I am more at peace here than I’ve been in a long time.

Apparently, the Guna feel it too.

In Rio Azúcar, a small island home to 300 people, we are welcomed by Shell, a lobster fisher and lead singer of the town’s carnival comparsa. After the carnival celebrations have ended, he guides us on a hike through the mainland rainforest.

“If I’m hungry, I just go into the jungle and pick a banana or some jams. The nature here provides everything I need.”

Shell is proud of his homeland and people. “The Guna take care of the trees,” he explains as he walks us through food crops and pristine forest. Many of the plants here have medicinal properties. The river provides the town with clean freshwater, and the caimans that live here have names: “In the hole under that mangrove over there lives Carlos.”

Although the simple Guna homes might register as ramshackle to the eye of a chalk-white westerner like me, programmed to worship the God of comfort and consumption, there’s no trace of precarity or hardship in the way Shell and his neighbours talk about their lives: “I love my land. This is a paradise. I thank the great creator for gifting me this place every day.”

The new ruins of Central America

Two weeks later, I am back on the mainland. In the small marina where I make my first stop, the romance ends.

Small and far away from almost everything you might want while on land, it has a crumbling concrete dock, a broken travel lifter, a run-down office, a small restaurant with a cracked floor, and a few abandoned holiday homes.

In what seems to be a testament to our times, the nearby beach is littered with heaps of plastic, like most remote beaches in the Caribbean. For sure, the fancy people who built this place must have had a different vision in mind.

As a paradise in ruins, destroyed by human attachment to endless, mindless, anxious consumption, I see it as a reminder of my own attachment to stuff. Stuff I think will make life easier and better, but ends up having the opposite effect.

The future is now

Sailing through the Caribbean has often felt like travelling through the ruins of a modern world that has been destroyed by greed and excess consumption, but this particular run-down marina strikes me as an unsettling image of what lies ahead if we don’t change course.

In many ways, we’re already there—in that dystopian future of Hollywood movies.

Just like those lonely roaming wanderers of the movie screens, I have, in the last few months, fixed my ship with scrap metal, spearfished among dying reefs, and learned how to live, perhaps even thrive, amidst the ruins.

And maybe this is the lesson of our time: that even as the world crumbles, there is still a glimmer of hope. Not hope that we will survive the apocalypse. Hope, instead, that its simplicity is what brings us back to life.

On his fourth journey to the Americas, Christopher Columbus spent weeks battling harsh conditions in the areas that lie between the Bay Islands of Honduras and the Cape on the Nicaraguan border.

Easterly trade winds, complex currents, and treacherous reefs make this an extremely challenging stretch for sailors wanting to get from Guatemala to the Caribbean (like us). When Columbus and his crew finally rounded the Cape, they gave it the fitting name Cabo Gracias a Dios—Cape Thank God.

We would probably have named it something similar, for in the weeks leading up to our passage through Nicaraguan waters, we have battled storms, engine problems, torn sails, exposed anchorages, as well as real and metaphorical pirates.

Or so we believe.

But first things first: since my new crew boarded Falkor in Guatemala’s Rio Dulce, it has been impossible to ignore certain world events that keep us on our toes. At one point, someone on board suggested that the motto for the next leg of Falkor’s journey should be “sailing for peace”—in a nod to the monks who are currently walking across the US.

But this reframe of our mission sparked dilemmas—cause what exactly would sailing for peace entail?

On one level, it seems so abstract that it loses meaning. Peace can be a lot of things, and from the comfort of a home, sailing might certainly seem like a peaceful activity, but from the anchorage where we are currently riding out a storm, it feels like anything but.

However. An important purpose of this journey has always been to emphasise the value and strength of human connection.

To show that, despite cultural differences, we live in a shared world, and that the things that bring us together can be stronger than those that set us apart.

And perhaps this was the lesson of our passage through Roatan, the largest one of Honduras’ Bay Islands, where serendipity had us arrive at Erica’s pirate’s den, Hole in the Wall, at the very moment that our anchor windlass and engine broke down.

We realized that our anchor was busted when Erica and her nephew waved us into the dock of the rickety floating pub, and we ended up staying for a full five days, while additional breakdowns kept us landlocked.

The vibe of Hole in the Wall was washed away sailor living the free life at sea, and Erica, originally a mainland Hondureña with an astute business sense and declared love for Donald Trump, ran the pub tight as a ship.

The experience was perplexing: as protestors clashed with the ICE in the streets of Minneapolis, we enjoyed a loving cultural encounter with a Honduran MAGA.

Erica must have been equally befuddled by the friendship that grew between her and our queer crew of gays, trans, and straight, even as our political opinions were openly declared. How refreshing and necessary it felt to see past our differences and go for a swim in the mangrove forests of Jonesville together.

A few days later, we were the ones with a penchant for violence, when we decided to arm ourselves to our teeth—with a machete, speargun, and Molotov cocktails in case the pirates that have reportedly robbed sailors along the Nicaraguan coast should pay us a visit.

We also brought bribes: a bottle of rum, US dollar bills, and some old and useless electronics. But it just didn’t seem enough.

“Fill a couple of glass bottles with gasoline, throw them at the pirate’s boat, and threaten to shoot an emergency flare at them, and you will see how quickly they’ll scatter,” an experienced sailor had advised before we left Honduras.

I didn’t want to get boarded by pirates in the middle of the ocean, and when an odd-looking ship started following our tracks, I waved my machete and had the crew prepare the Molotovs.

Turns out, it was just a shrimp fisher, or so we were later told.

Sailing for peace indeed.

On board Falkor, there were also moments of tension, raised voices, and boundary crossing. Disagreements tend to become more effusive when we are tired, living on top of each other, and facing challenges, fears, and reality-checks.

But living together on a tiny ass boat can also be sobering when you acknowledge that conflict corrodes the atmosphere for all.

And maybe that's why the saying “we are all in the same boat” is so dang efficient in conveying the need to reach some sort of truce, if not an agreement, with pirates and MAGAs alike.

Especially when there is no plank to walk.

Guatemala. Who would have thought that I’d fall head over heels for this country and its people?

I will try not to romanticise, but it is going to be hard. Firstly, because I’m a hopeless romantic. Secondly, because Guatemalans.

I mean, it is hard to grasp how this country and its people retain such a gentle, hospitable, and loving energy after a mass exodus that has shattered families, a brutally violent 35-year-long US and Israeli-initiated civil war, and centuries of ongoing colonization.

Still, amid this pain, the Guatemalan people I have met keep smiling at life and strangers.

Culturally, Guatemala is a wildly diverse country, its small size considered. The population of 18 million speaks 25 languages, most of them Maya dialects—22 total. Despite the colonial repression of their culture, the vast indigenous population—around 50%—still nurtures its traditions, especially around Lake Atitlan, where I have spent most of my time.

There, I documented the lives of families who have been divided due to migration, mainly to the US.

I learned about the sacrifices migrants make to create a better future for themselves and their families, and took portraits of the mothers, wives, and children who are left behind as young men embark on the dangerous and costly journey across borders, endure conditions akin to slavery, and suffer from stigma and persecution.

These are the people currently criminalised and hunted by Trump’s ICE officers.

In a striking contrast to the grim realities of migration, I have learned about the power of ancestral wisdom through a family of midwives and spirit guides. They have made it their mission and call to share their knowledge with the world—to bring spirituality back to the equation.

The pictures that follow are my attempt to explore the complexity of contemporary Guatemala and the lessons I’ve been left with by people who have reminded me of nature’s abundance, the power of prayer, and the importance of family.

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You can talk yourself up or you can talk yourself down. You can focus on all the parameters by which your life is a failure, or you can focus on all the incredible gifts your life has brought you.

This is the truth we often forget: life is rarely a series of blessings for any of us. It is a cacophony of experiences—some feel so warm, delightful, and exciting that they make us bubble and burst with energy and enthusiasm, others so heavy, challenging, and dark that they have us questioning whether it is worth it.

Life can be a challenge and it can be great—and most often it is both. Sometimes at the same time.

I know that my life has been one of polar opposites—of extremes. I’ve gotten to live some experiences that have baffled me with their uniqueness and beauty, but I’ve also been in the trenches. The last year, as I have sailed across the Atlantic, has been no exception.

There will be challenges

I have, first of all, had the opportunity to share the journey with an amazing bunch of human beings. We have tested each others patience, mirrored each other’s pain, laughed together, and cared for each other in our vulnerable moments.

I have also had a chance to explore the Atlantic region—its cultural history, worldviews, traditions, and people. I’ve sailed across three continents, visited fishing communities, slept in busy commercial ports and cruising hubs.

Perhaps our wildest mooring experience was the old fishing port of Essaouira in Morocco, in between small fishing boats, a centuries-old fortress, and the hustle of a fishery industry that never sleeps.

The scariest one was the concrete dock in the small town of Agaete in Gran Canaria, where I, halfway up a mountain, received a phone call from the port employees who warned me that five tons of sailboat were hanging from the mooring lines, as the tide had receded by a meter while the dock remained immobile. They cut the moorings for me, and Falkor was saved, but I was not aware until I had run a 10K trail down the mountain with visions of a destroyed sailboat and a cancelled journey running through my mind.

On the longest leg of our journey we were, for a moment, as close to complete failure and utter disaster as I have ever been on board Falkor, when the Furlex system for the genoa jammed, and our sail started to slam the spinnaker boom into our railings in 40-knot winds. It was one of those moments when you realise that nobody is coming to save you, that you are the one who has to take charge.

I managed, against all odds, to tuck the three-meter-long metal boom away—five meter swells crashing over the deck—and salvage the sail before it tore. We pulled it down from the stay by hand, and in through the front hatch, my bed soaked in seawater and sweat.

Afterwards, my knees felt like jelly, and the adrenaline rush completely depleted me of all of my energy. It was a moment of profound questioning: what the hell have I embarked upon? Are we in over our heads?

We had to sail the remaining seven days to Barbados with a reefed mainsail only, a new solar panel setup, and extra precautions due to the destroyed railings. But we made it. And after two months of shipping spare parts across the world—from Sweden to Martinique to Norway to Mexico—Falkor was finally mended and fixed.

I have also dealt with financial hurdles. That sailing is the most expensive way to travel for free is a poorly kept secret. But when my neighbours in the port of Barcelona congratulated me on chronic poverty for the rest of my life, after I had told them that I decided not to sell the boat, I didn’t believe them. Now I kinda do.

Indeed, sailing is a money pit. One misplaced bolt can easily signify more than a $1,000 repair. Now imagine a couple of those in a row, and you’ll quickly realise that it is not fuel, nor the travel costs, restaurant dinners or supplies that constitute the main costs of sailing.

Nah. It’s the boring stuff: the clogged toilet, water pumps, spare parts for the engine, navigation equipment, or faulty electrical wiring that will bust your pocket.

Speaking about the challenges I’ve faced on my journey in the last few months with a friend who’s a sailing content aficionado, he offered me some sobering words of wisdom: “Tomas, everybody who sails says the same—the challenges are beyond anything that they expected.” And that actually helped: I’m not doing it wrong.

And there will also be rewards

What has largely balanced the scales is the encounters and deep conversations with the common folks—the silent everyday champions—that we’ve run into in Barbados, the Dominican Republic, or Guatemala. The Jon and Jane Does that have shared their life wisdom with us.

Like the guy who waited for me on the beach in Cayman Island, where we anchored for two hours, to fill our fuel cans at the gas station.

I had battled my inner demons for the last few days, weeks, and heck, why not, months. But as we raced towards Cancun to be there in time for my flight back to Europe, the negative self talk had been extra. We had endured sweltering heat for a week, and the Caribbean had so far mostly provided tons of paperwork, marathon legs, and just a couple of hours on anchor on palm-clad beaches. I was questioning myself, my decisions, and the journey.

But as we stepped on land, an aged and slender Black guy hollered at me and asked for my name. He shook my hand, and without letting go, he started talking about the deeper meaning of life, the universal law of polarity, and the gifts of slow travel.

He had worked as a captain for twenty years in total: ten on a plane and ten on a ship. “What’s best?” I jokingly tried him. I was ready to ram my ship into a reef, cash the insurance money, and hop on a plane to Australia.

“When you fly you get to your destination much faster,” he said, stating the obvious. “But you miss all the stories that you gather when you travel along the surface of the earth. And at the end of life we realise that’s what we’re here for: to collect stories.”

I felt the tension that had accumulated in my chest release. “I think you’ve been sent by the universe to give me this message,” I told him. “This was exactly what I needed to hear right now.”

He looked me straight in the eyes, smiled, and said: “Yes, I often deliver messages on behalf of the universe. Here they call me Black Jesus.”

Okay Black Jesus, I thought to myself. I’m glad that we met.

Practicing faith in the process

In New Age spirituality and Jungian pop psychology, coincidences that feel like magic are called synchronicities. And we’ve had a lot of those this year. Yes—it might feel a little kooky to sail around the world convinced that you’re being guided by a higher power. But that’s what 2025 has felt like.

I’m doing something I’ve dreamed of but never thought I would do. Something that, at times, feels extremely scary and extremely challenging. I’ve given up on most comforts. I’ve emptied my emergency fund. I’ve pushed myself to share my vulnerabilities and reflections as openly as possible, and I have, again and again and again, tried as best I can to follow my intuition—the gut feeling—and not the sometimes scattered and chaotic mind that loves to talk me down.

I’m writing this not as a victorious conclusion but as a reminder from the tedious middle of a process that no matter where you are on your own life-journey—whether you feel stuck in an unsatisfying job, or worried that you might have made a wrong decision—you can, perhaps, find comfort in the idea that these challenges, the moments we feel like we’re moving in the wrong direction, that we messed up, or that we’re in way over our heads—these are the moments that constitute the richness of life.

So if you’re a normal human being who struggles at times, remind yourself that what now feels like an ordeal might just be the story you’ll look back on with compassion and pride at the end of your life, and say, “I fucking did it!”

Dear reader,

The holidays are coming up, and I’m doing something a little different this time.

Instead of sharing an update from the last weeks, I’m honouring the spirit of Christmas by taking a moment to thank all of you who have read, liked, commented, shared, donated, and in so many other ways reached out to support me over the past twelve months.

Before setting sail from Barcelona last December, I was nervous. I was acting on a hunch, following my intuition and what I took to be small signs pointing me in this direction—but if I’m honest, I was full of doubt.

So I called my psychic. Of course.

She didn’t hesitate when she said: I see people from all over the world supporting you.
Instead of feeling reassured, I felt terrified. Accepting help? Me? Unheard of.

And also—why would anyone give me anything, just because?

Still, I made a quiet commitment to say yes whenever support was offered. Looking back, that decision may have been one of the biggest shifts of my life.

What I’ve received hasn’t just been practical help. It has changed how I understand myself, and how I understand human connection—the quiet, often invisible bonds of care and solidarity that stretch across oceans and borders.

Imagine this: you decide to follow something that matters deeply to you, without knowing exactly where it will lead, and along the way people open their homes, feed you, lend you equipment, offer financial support, lift you up when you’re discouraged, and show up without being asked.

That has been my experience this past year. It has restored my faith in humanity in ways I didn’t know I needed.

At a time when the media cycle thrives on fear, and when those in power so often seem to embody the worst of our collective flaws, what I’ve encountered has quietly insisted that the light is stronger than the darkness.

This year, I’ve been invited to countless dinners, given fresh food in remote islands, hosted in people’s homes, mentored, picked up, dropped off, and supported in so many different ways. I’ve been equipped with biking gear, boat gear, and camera gear. People have supported me financially, my crew has sailed, sweat, and bled with me. Every gesture has mattered.

In return, I’ve shared my time, my energy, my stories—and listened to others’. I’ve invited people to be part of this journey through my lens and texts. But I’ve also learned that we don’t always give back to those who help us in a way that feels balanced. Sometimes, we simply commit to paying it forward.

More than once, when I have offered to share these stories on social media, I’ve had people tell me: “We’re doing it because we want to support you, not for visibility.”

Still, I want to take this opportunity to share some of the pictures I’ve taken of some of the people who have made this journey possible. They have reminded me that not everything has to be transactional—that there are still ways of relating that aren’t governed by price tags or performance, but by trust, generosity, and care.

As Christmas approaches, I hope their portraits serve as a small reminder of the many quiet (and loud) ways we do show up for one another—and of the support that can appear when we dare to live in alignment with what feels true.

Thank you for being part of this journey. I’m deeply grateful, and excited to share the year ahead with you.

And remember—“humanity” is not an abstraction, it is you and me, it is us.

Merry Christmas,
Capi Taco <3

The cavalry has arrived! A few days ago, I got new crew on board Falkor, and weeks of lonely frustration over mounting repairs were finally (or partly) interrupted by friendly support and stress-release through one of late capitalism’s finest inventions: venting.

My own bluntness around the so-called midlife crisis I’ve been navigating for well over a year now was, apparently, what drew the guys in. Probably an example of how like attracting like is not just spiritual whoohoo but sometimes as simple as relating through identification.

“It’s nice to meet you in person,” Adam told me. “And realise that you’re just as messed up as the rest of us…”

Well, he didn’t say it exactly in those words, but that was the gist of it.

In between the exchange of shared miseries, Frank asked the question seething under the surface: “Are you happy, Tomas?” I should be, shouldn’t I? I have been researching happiness for close to a decade, and I’m free as a bird, or perhaps as a dolphin.

But when Adam and Frank probed me, I hesitated. Because what does it mean to be happy?

Feeling good, or practicing a different relationship to feeling?

What do the “experts” say?

Faced with Frank’s question, I was forced to pause and reflect.

Am I happy all the time? Definitely no. Do I sometimes cave in to despair? Definitely yes. Am I content with the life I am living? Depends on when you’re asking.

And then I realised that happiness, for me, is no longer tied to the giggly feeling of upbeat euphoria, but rather, to my capacity to create some distance between who I am and my emotions. That is: to accept the ups and downs without turning them into the sole criteria I evaluate my life by at any given moment.

In other words, a mashup of some of the worlds greatest philosophical traditions.

For, while Buddhism teaches us that ups and downs are part of the impermanence of life and should be approached through non-attachment, the Hindu remind us to acknowledge challenges as part of the process of expansion of the self.

Facing challenges without collapsing

On to the practical application. Take the last couple of weeks—they have been gnarly.

Perhaps without reason (or perhaps rightfully so), I’ve felt close to collapse beneath the weight of my project. Nothing new under the sun: I’ve been here before. And every time I find myself facing challenges with no immediate solution, I’m caught feeling simultaneously lighter and heavier.

Go figure.

Lighter, because I know this feeling by now. The feeling of “WTF do I do now?”, “can someone please come save me?”, and “why can’t this be easier?” And I know that it is fleeting—that if I’m able to keep my cool I’ll sort things out. Non-attachment, eventually.

But also heavier.

Because, despite the certainty that I’ll find a solution (this time too), there’s a part of me that’s just so damn tired of this rodeo. Tired of living in survival mode. The first time something breaks on your boat, it is easy to recur to “positive thinking”. Not so much when it becomes routine.

So what is it then? Do we ever find resolution?

Go with the flow

Earlier this year I experimented with a plant medicine called Xanga during a trip through Yucatán (you can read about my journey here). Xanga is basically smoked DMT, and as the proper little psychonaut I like to tell myself I am, I set an intention to connect with the wisdom of the region.

For the Maya, time is cyclical, not linear—and for the first time in my life, I felt, in my body, what this might mean.

Lady Xanga took me on a spin around the tumble-dryer and dissolved my sense of time, suspending me in a state of circular eternity. The wheel of Samsara, perhaps?

The Maya are not the only ones who understand how energy moves in cycles that take you down and then up and then down again. These shifting states of emotion and mind are necessary phases of our expansion: they imply shifts of perspective and time for integration.

One of the central principles of Taoism is wu wei—the practice of letting things flow naturally, without resistance.

So next time you’re down, ask yourself this: am I stuck or am I in the middle of a process? And can I allow the cycle to unfold without forcing the pace or running from the discomfort?

If you let life unfold, chances are you will get out of the dip, catch your breath, and eventually—dip again (sorry to burst your bubble).

And now, to the conclusion:

From Eastern philosophies to Maya cosmology, different traditions teach us that descent precedes expansion. Experiencing challenging emotions does not mean that you’re doing it wrong. It means that you are “learning a lesson.”

In the West, the early contenders for a theory of happiness that did not rest on the false ideal of perfection were the Ancient Greek.

The Stoics did not see happiness as the absence of difficulty. Rather, they saw it as rooted in an ability to remain grounded when life presents us with friction. For the frugal Epicureans, on the other hand, happiness was found in the appreciation of simple pleasures.

In both schools, the underlying message was clear: don’t expect life to be a fairytale of constant wish fulfilments if you want the real magic to unfold. That is, drop the expectations that warm and fluffy feelings should be the be all end all of your path and appreciate the calm waters in between the storms.

In any case, learning how to navigate life’s difficulties seems like a reasonable prerequisite for a life that feels good. Are you willing to accept the challenge?

In the last few days, I’ve met many people who have told me that I’m living the dream. My replies fluctuate between “I know that I’m living someone’s dream” and “If you had your own boat you would not say that, you would say I’m sorry for you”.

I might be living someone’s dream. Or perhaps just what seems like a dream from an outside perspective. But from my point of view, this is all but a dream. It is a challenge, and a very demanding one.

For twelve months, I’ve written, filmed, photographed, and shared the journey. I have taken crew on board, I have invested in gear, I have navigated my ship through rough seas and vast distances, I have explored foreign cultures, I have faced fears, emptied all of my bank accounts, written grant applications, upheld university collaborations, and navigated the post-PhD transition while trying to build a storytelling project at sea.

Don’t get me wrong—I’ve had some beautiful moments and adventures that I have willingly recorded or written about, perhaps giving the impression that my life is, in fact, a dream.

But here’s the part of the story that I have been reluctant to share so far:

Long distance sailing turns your life upside down. It requires you to step out of the safety of employment while taking on responsibility for a floating list of repairs with astronomical expenses. And for crew members whose well-being you’ve just made yourself responsible for.

If you take on a sailing adventure of these proportions, prepare to have holes in your shoes and in your wallet.

Even when shared, it can feel extremely lonely. Crew can support you, but as captain of your ship you are painstakingly aware that if the boat breaks down you are stuck until you’ve found the solution, while the crew can step off at the closest port and catch a flight home or somewhere else. Their end-date is set and definite, yours is always pushed a bit further into the future and conditional.

Creating a life that feels aligned is freaking hard. It requires self-discipline, sacrifice, and stamina. It also requires letting go of comforts and expectations. And sometimes it feels like a full-blown identity collapse. It feels like abandoning hopes and dreams for the future—including stability and safety.

And it puts your nervous system to the test.

When I left Barcelona, I knew I was signing up for an adventure. I expected a mix of challenges, beautiful sunsets, paradise beaches and cultural experiences. But I had no idea how emotionally intense this experience would be, how hard fear would hit me, and how much I’m being forced to grow to get to the other side.

This might come as a shock to you if you have tagged along on my journey. Most of the content I’ve shared has a succinctly upbeat and playful tone. And my little videos and newsletters are not lies, they are just curated snippets from a lifestyle that is also full of challenges.

Yes, it’s easier to pick up the camera when there are dolphins jumping out of the ocean in front of you, and harder when the waves and wind are threatening the structural integrity of your boat. Or when you’re trying to out-sail a lightning storm.

And yes, I’d rather share a video from a hammock on a paradise beach, than my feelings of frustration and vulnerability after yet another thousand-euro-piece of vital equipment has broken down on some remote island where spare parts are impossible to resource.

Long distance sailing is emotional bootcamp. Not a joyride—even when you’ve caught some fish, found a secluded anchorage, or discovered a piece of paradise on Earth.

As captain, the sailboat gives me equal amounts of headache and joy, and sometimes I even suspect that the headache outweighs the joy.

I’ve already accepted that this is not the path to financial abundance. That ship sailed with the accumulation of debt, boat repairs, permits, and sailing fees. Instead, I’ve leaned into the exploration of other meanings of abundance, and examined my own fears around lack of money.

Do I really need to be able to pay my bills or can I negotiate few late payments with the bank? Do I really need to go to the dentist, or can it wait? Do I really need a functioning fridge, or can I live on non-perishables for a few months until I get to a place where a new fridge does not equate a monthly budget of living expenses?

Sounds super fun and exciting, right?

I tell myself that I’m doing it for a greater cause. That I’m pursuing purpose rather than success.

Right now, it’s unclear to me whether that’s true or self-deception. Maybe I end up dropping the ball, selling the boat, and getting a corporate job for a company that produces disposable plastic gadgets. Nah bro.

But those are my fantasies when the sailing becomes a little bit too rough. Always so dramatic.

Another fantasy of mine is that someone will swoop in to “save” me: a dream partner with a wad of cash who quits his job to join me, fixes the boat’s engine and changes the electrical system onboard.

Yes please. Or maybe I’ll just hire a mechanic.

But all jokes aside, hyper-independence is so last year. I already know I can make it on my own through a storm—there’s nothing left to prove. Doing things on your own is not the long-term solution to life dissatisfaction.

And don’t get me wrong. I have gotten heaps of support.

In fact, one of the biggest discoveries of this journey is that you can count on people to show up for you when you live in alignment. But you have to trust that the cavalry is coming even when you can’t see the signs. And that’s hard.

The deal I made with the universe before sailing from Spain was as follows: I would get everything I needed in order to be happy, I just had to ask. In exchange, I wouldn’t take more than I need. Apparently, the universe thinks that I can resource most of my happiness from within.

And sure—the universe is probably right.

But am I ready for that? And do I even want to? The happiness I was thinking of when I made the deal, was a bit more conventional than what I’m getting. I was thinking about a business running like a well-oiled machine, offering me a financial cushion that my university job has been unable to provide. I was also thinking about a partner who would be a better fit to my personality than the party boys I’ve dated in the past.

That was my mission: a life built around my personality, skills, and passions.

And sure, I’m building that, but sometimes it feels like I keep moving further from these goals instead of closer.

Here’s the truth: I am scared of failing. I am scared that I made the wrong decision. I often ask myself if I should have stayed in Europe. If the stress, the debt, and the constant uncertainty are worth it.

Sometimes, this journey feels like something I endure while trusting that the effort will be appreciated once I’m safely on the other shore.

Maybe today is not the day for the evaluation. Both my inboard and outboard engines are bust. So is my fridge. The boat has deteriorated after six months in a tropical rainforest. Several crew members have cancelled last minute. Departure is delayed. There’s still water in my propellant oil after two expensive repairs. My cash reserves are dwindling. I’m paralysed by fear.

But I’m starting to see that fear isn’t a sign I’ve gone off track—it’s the cost of growing into the person this journey is inviting me to become. I know that these emotions shall also pass. And that the worst case scenario is a bruised ego and a fresh start.

Indeed, sailing is the par excellence metaphor for life, and it is teaching me that maybe growth isn’t supposed to feel graceful at all. Maybe it’s meant to feel like this—messy, disorienting, and honest.

For the moment, I’ll just remind myself of what my psychic told me before I set out of port: this will be a test of faith. And maybe it is faith, not the Pacific, that has been the real destination all along.

Peace out, Capi Taco

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In October, I finished my gig in Las Vegas and jumped on a plane to Mexico City. There, I suddenly realised that my journey would take me through Oaxaca, the region known for the country’s most vibrant and elaborate Day of the Dead celebrations.

There was only one problem: I didn’t have a place to stay, and hotels were sold out months ago.

So I did what I’ve gotten accustomed to doing on this trip. I decided to manifest someone to stay with.

I know that when you manifest, you’re only supposed to use the power of your mind. But I’m not quite there yet, and instead, I’ve designed my own manifestation technique. It’s simple: I write down what I want, taking a few steps in the right direction, and trust that the universe will meet me halfway.

So I sent a few texts to my Mexican friends to see if they knew anyone in Oaxaca, and immediately went out to have tacos.

And it worked: the guy standing next to me at the taco stand happened to have the same hand tattoo as I do, and after a short chat, he told me that he was going to Oaxaca for Day of the Dead and that I could stay with him and his friends. And people claim magic isn’t real…

First lesson: Death can be joyful and just fucking fun

I spent the first few days of the celebrations in Zipolite, a small nudist beach town on the Pacific coast. There, I was invited to stay at the family-run hotel Budamar, where Miraceti and her family hosted a pageant to honour Catrina, the lady of death. Not to be feared but rather to be befriended.

Unfortunately (but deservedly), I did not win.

But I did get my face painted in an impressive collaborative work of art, and I got to flaunt my look next to a few naked penises. Which felt like a win: for me, death will from now on always be associated with the dick of a cheerful German tourist with a flower painted on the crown of his head. And that beats a lot of other associations.

I should know. I’ve accompanied my partner to his death. My associations are both profound and difficult. But not joyfully absurd.

Second lesson: Grief feels lighter when it is shared

After Javier’s death, I’ve remembered him on the anniversary of his passing. And on his birthday.

It sometimes feels lonely. His family is usually far away, and I feel compelled to spend time in solitude to honour Javier’s memory. Talking about him feels like imposing my grief on others. And when you lose a partner in your thirties, you often feel like you’ve been condemned to grieve alone.

In Mexico, Dia de los Muertos showed me what I already knew but sometimes struggle to feel: that I’m not alone in experiencing grief and loss.

Remembering Javier alongside a sea of people who were also remembering their loved ones felt… comforting. It relieved the burden of having to mark the date in my calendar. Of having an obligation to step out of my everyday routine to honour my partner, since there’s already a day for that. It felt lighter.

Third lesson: Relationships don’t end with death

And yes, seeing how the Mexicans remember their dead stirred something in me.

Their relationship to the dead isn’t abstract. It isn’t just a thought. A fleeting memory. A faded picture.

No. The Mexicans spend weeks preparing. They carefully and intentionally create altars in their homes. They make small offerings to the people they have lost. They decorate and visit their tombs—they eat lunch and dinner at the graves. They play live music. They talk to the dead. They share stories. They meditate. They drink, sing, and laugh. They spend time with them.

Walking through the graveyards and seeing how these places came alive was a powerful reminder that relationships based on love are never-ending. Even when the other is gone, we keep them alive in the countless conversations we have with them in our minds.

The sign

Seeing so many people go to such lengths to pay tribute to their dead inspired me.

At the graveyard in the center of Oaxaca, I decided I would search for a grave that said Javier. Apparently, it is not a common name in Mexico, cause I could not, for the life of me, find any.

So I kinda gave up on the idea.

“It can say Romero as well,” I reasoned—Romero was Javier’s last name. And as soon as I had finished that thought, I saw it: a tomb that said Romero. “Wow!” I laughed to myself, “That was fast.” And then, tears, as I looked closer and realised that the grave I had found belonged, indeed, to Javier Romero.

There he was. Waiting for me. Comforting me. And impatiently demanding that I pay attention to our encounter: “If you’re gonna be worrying about practicalities, I’ll leave,” he said, as my mind drifted.

And that’s how I knew it was really him.

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Spirituality for consumption

In September, I travelled to Las Vegas to build the world’s largest lantern festival (at least according to the Americans).

For three weeks, my Guatemalan friends and I ate dust for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and parked thousands of Range Rovers, Hummers, and Cybertrucks (there were some normal cars there too) so that some 45.000 people would be able to release their wishes into the sky.

To no one’s surprise, the stunningly beautiful lantern ritual at the RISE festival in Vegas was an epitome of the kind of spirituality for consumption that characterises today’s music festivals.

Yes, we all “feel at one with the universe” and “come together” as humanity, like the festival loudspeakers and mellow deep house sets that played as the lanterns rose to the sky reminded us.

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But for me, as well as the people I worked with, the real ritual was building the big badass festival area in the middle of the Nevada desert.

Granted, there are different kinds of rituals—some create cohesion, some mark time, and some aim to transform us. It’s the last kind that demands difficulty; these rites of passage are not supposed to be easy—they are supposed to be hard.

Rites of passage require us to embrace the discomfort of growth

But sometimes, our love of comfort halts our growth.

We avoid the challenging emotions that come with being a stranger in a foreign land, of seeing our identity and attachments stripped from us, or of having to endure physical hardships. Or we carefully curate the kind, intensity, and time frame of these challenges, so that we can retain the illusion that we’re in control of both process and outcome: so we do our gym routine and convince ourselves that we are pushing ourselves past our limits while we delight in the euphoria of adrenaline rush and endorphins released.

The rites of passage of our time often lack the collapse of our egos that past rites of passage were structured around.

In the past, initiates had to go through challenging experiences designed to break down old identities so a new identity could be born. These processes required a sacred space—a space outside of ordinary life—and leaders who could guide the process.

Today, we are left with a bunch of ceremonial pseudorituals designed to make us feel that warm, fluffy feeling inside, and give ourselves a pat on the shoulder: look at how spiritual I’m being now!

But these experiences rarely carry the power needed to achieve a transformation in our consciousness. That doesn’t mean they’re meaningless—it means they serve a different function.

Pushing through the pain together

What if spiritual growth requires pain? What if it requires feeling all of the emotions? What if it requires being willing to stay outside of your comfort zone for however long it takes for you to process the shit that you’re dealing with?

It can seem like an almost impossible task.

That is, until you realise that we’re all in this together.

At the RISE festival, it was exactly this feeling of community, of togetherness, that helped us overcome the challenges of the desert.

Seeing your buddies sweating next to you, knowing that they too were tired, knowing that they too were stressed, knowing that they too were eating dust, dehydrated, and sometimes overwhelmed, and then pushing through together, laughing together, goofing around together, and experiencing the lantern’s release together, that was the real ritual—the transformative kind.

And perhaps—despite the commercial dimension of today’s festivals—this was the lesson from RISE for the guests as well, not in the sense of deep transformation, but in the reminder of shared humanity: the thousands of attendants who had not built the festival with us, but who still navigate life’s challenges in a world where we’re pitted against each other and told that we have to make it on our own.

They too came together, looked each other in the eyes, and realised that we are not alone on this journey.

Even if festivals like RISE won’t take us through true rites of passage, they can still remind us that even if the times we are living in are challenging, they might get a little easier if we face the challenges together.

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It’s been 15 years since my first biking trip through southern Chile. Since then, I’ve dreamt of hitting the road again.

But there’s always an excuse, innit?

I don’t have the time; I don’t have the money, I don’t have the gear; I don’t have the company (in my case, they all applied).

Sociologist Hartmut Rosa has noted how the modern recipe for happiness teaches us to first accumulate the resources and then go for what we want. The danger, he warns, is that we get stuck in an eternal preparation—kinda like the protestant deferral of happiness to the afterlife that Max Weber noted was at the heart of the spirit of capitalism.

The solution—my solution—has been to push past the excuses my mind makes up, my inner naysayer, and trust that the universe aligns to meet me halfway when I go for what I want with determination. In this case, to go on a biking adventure through the US desert during my visit to Las Vegas in September.

Importantly, I’m practicing how to apply spiritual teachings—universal laws or principles—to see if there is an easier way to move through the experiment of life.

Let go of the old in order to receive the new

One of these principles is the idea that we need to let go of our attachments before we can receive the resources we need to reach our goals.

So, ahead of my trip to Vegas, I left my rickety foldable bike—my only obvious means of transport—with my buddy Ventura in Guatemala, trusting that I would find a better solution than the amusing-bordering-to-ridiculus idea of biking on a bike built for someone half my size.

And surprise—as soon as I had let go of what seemed to be my most likely means of transport (at the time), I got a text from my buddies Dell and Cerissa, who live in Vegas and upon hearing rumors of my planned adventure, offered to equip me with a roadbike, lightweight tent, and camping gear—even the food I needed for my mini expedition.

Spiritual principle confirmed.

As if in a nod of acknowledgment that you can really manifest whatever you set your mind to, Dell, Cerissa, and our mutual friend Caleb, decided to drop me off at Bryce Canyon in southern Utah, joining me for the first leg of the adventure, and leaving me at the starting point of a route of scenic highlights that took me through some of the most stunning natural monuments in America.

The contemporary cowboy wears padded lycra

From Bryce Canyon, I biked my way south through the landscapes Hollywood transformed into the mythos of the Wild West. In American popular culture, they may epitomize the fantasy of the self-made, tobacco-smoking, gun-slinging cowboy-man. And in a sense, this was the role I had unwittingly assumed.

Although I didn’t ride a horse, I rode a bike, and although I did not wield a gun, I did eat canned beans under an immaculate starry sky.

However, technology was not what primarily distinguished my cowboy story from those of the past. Rather, my journey through the desert took me to what I soon realized was not the US at all, but the Navajo Nation. And my encounter with the Native Americans was not a gun-blazing battle, but a meaningful encounter between fellow humans.

The transformative experience of receiving help

Some cancelled their plans to give me a ride. Others shoved me dollar bills “for the road”. They shared their food, their stories, their music, their hopes and fears, their faith, their prayers, their wisdom, and their places of worship to the land with a dehydrated and sweaty white bro on a roadbike.

“When I saw you at the side of the road, I hesitated,” one of the truck drivers who gave me, my bike, and my flat tire a 20-mile ride to Tuba City. “I thought you might be like the white dudes I’ve met in the past.” He’d had a bad experience with a hitchhiker but decided to practice kindness nonetheless. “I’m glad I picked you up,” he said as he set me off on the road that marks the border between the Navajo and Hopi tribes.

Let’s take a moment to reflect on the fact that despite centuries of resistance to colonial violence, the Navajo of today received me with generosity and warmth.

Note to self: the next time I’m about to be swayed by my white savior complex—the Navajo helped me, not the other way around.

Lesson #1: Money is not the prerequisite for getting what you want

Summing up: once I got past my own excuses (and let’s be honest, after almost a year of kamikaze sailing, it wasn’t that hard), I learned that when you think of currency and resources as abstract terms—as flow of energy—the world is ripe with possibilities.

But it requires letting go of that late capitalist belief that to pursue our passions and follow our dreams, we first need to accumulate money and resources. You might object that downplaying the importance of money sounds a little daft, and it would not be entirely untrue.

But also, through my eleven and counting months of travel, I’ve learned that monetary exchanges are not the only kind of exchanges we humans make, and that giving and receiving help freely can be one of the most radical acts in a world where energy exchanges are increasingly quantified and transformed into monetary value.

Lesson #2: Relationships are built through reciprocity

Among anthropologists, such “energy exchanges” are analyzed as “reciprocity”, and friendships are not just resources we tap into, but relations that emerge from the willingness to give or receive without immediately balancing the scales.

Meaningful relationships are built through the trust that balance will be restored over time. We have all heard some iteration of the phrase “I trust you’ll return the gift when you can.”

The time it takes between the initial help, support, or gift is given to the moment it is returned can even be a symbol of the strength of a relationship. Perhaps, then, the giving and receiving of help and support between categories of people who have been pitted against each other is the antidote to current conflicts.

Lesson #3: Abandon the measuring cup

But also, the next level of reciprocity might just be found in the idea of “paying it forward” and the acknowledgement that we’re all part of an interconnected web of relations that flourishes when we give and receive freely—without having to rely on the measuring cup.

And maybe, when we trust that the universe has its own way of balancing the scales, we will finally be able to free ourselves from our current compulsion to put a price tag on everything, or to see accumulation of resources as the necessary precursor to freedom and joy.

It’s been a while since I’ve had time to sit down and write something that makes sense to myself—much less others.

Not to be confused with a period of stagnation. The last month has been one of tremendous growth and expansion.

I’ve gone from a mini fieldwork with a family of spiritual guides and Maya midwives in the Guatemalan highlands to the ritz and glamour (not really) of Las Vegas neon, from migrant families to Navajo drummers. It’s been an intense ride on bus, bike, and plane—but one thing became clearer to me than ever: we are not radically different people living in separate worlds. We are all the same, and we share the same Earth.

Before leaving the lush and fertile areas around Lake Atitlán for the dusty desert of the US southwest, I spent a week with a family of Nanas—indigenous leaders, spiritual guides, and midwives—devoted to upholding tradition and sharing ancestral wisdom.

My host, Nana Reina, brought me to the altars scattered across the hillsides, teaching me to connect with spirit through fire and smoke. I’ve learned to pray to Mother Nature, to speak to old trees, and to listen to rocks.

In exchange, I shared my Norwegian mountain coffee ritual. And while she used burning tobacco and I a thermos, we both sought the same thing in nature: beauty, stillness, presence.

The Nanas had travelled too, and concluded that while food and skin color might vary, we are all the same—we inhabit the same Earth.

This might seem obvious, but lately some academics argue that human experiences are so different we may as well live in parallel universes. In some, people speak with rocks and trees; in others, they cannot.

After bidding the Nanas farewell, I boarded a plane to Las Vegas, where I found myself preparing for a very different fire ceremony. With a crew composed of old and new friends—gig-workers in the American festival industry—we drilled 5000 holes in the ground, in the shape of a compass. A symbolic gesture to encourage the participants of the ritual release of some 30.000 Chinese lanterns to reflect on where they are.

Interestingly, the ceremony mirrored the Maya’s insistence on paying attention to the cardinal points, to the sunrise and sunsets, to the guardian ancestors of north, south, east, and west.

Prior to the gig, Dell and Cerissa, whom I’d met a few weeks earlier in Guatemala, equipped me with all the gear we white people use to enter “the wild.” In a week, I biked 600 km through what I soon realized was not the US at all, but the Navajo Nation.

I visited the great parks and monuments of Utah and Arizona, and learned that there, too, people speak with rocks, trees, rivers, and streams. There, too, people seek out nature for stillness and healing.

The insistence on paying attention to the cardinal points was reiterated by the Navajo, who pitched their tipis with the entrance facing sunrise. And although we might attribute different meanings to the rituals we perform, the common symbolism that runs through them all says something about the shared experiences of humanity. Our perspectives may differ, but we inhabit the same world.

My ceremonial robes were different from the Navajo I met: I wore padded Lycra shorts; they carried drums. Regardless, our purpose was similar: to connect to the forces of nature. To marvel at the beauty of Gaia.

And lo and behold, as I pressed my ear to the barren rocks of the Sonoran desert, as I prayed to Mother Earth and invoked the spirits of ancestors, rivers, and canyons, she spoke back.

Not through crisp words, but subtle cues and inner knowing: I am here with you. I am your home, your temple, your guide.

And when I least expected it, she showed me her face.

Thank you Pacha Mama. Maltiox Ajaw, maltiox.

No matter where we come from, Earth is our common teacher. The question is: how do we choose to listen?

This week I attended a made-for-gringos fire ceremony led by Tata Búho, one of the Maya shamans who live on the shores of Lake Atitlán.

Why should you care? Because it reveals how the West is finally beginning to listen—and what we do with that listening will shape our spiritual and ecological future.

Búho invited us to make offerings to the 20 nahuales or spirit animals of the Maya calendar. He reminded us to practice gratitude—to our parents for giving us life, to the abundance of earth for sustaining us, even to the challenges we face, since that is where change is born: “We need the darkness of night to see the stars,” Búho reminded.

A phrase also attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson—so maybe we’re not so different after all.

Invoking the spirits of our ancestors, he stressed the importance of being close to our father’s family line and our mother’s line: the need to know where we come from to see where we are going.

The strength and unity of family in this part of the world should not be underestimated. It offers a powerful antidote to the individualism of Western modernity and a path for deeper self-awareness as we acknowledge how our ancestry continues to shape us and our experience of the world.

Redefining hierarchies between the West and the rest

One of the most powerful moments came when one of the women had to leave early. Búho asked her if she wanted him to offer her half-smoked tobacco to the fire, and proceeded to shower her in alcohol and half-chewed tobacco leaves with his mouth.

In the last years, fire ceremonies for western pilgrims, visitors, and tourists have become an important source of income for the tatas in the area, but perhaps more significantly, an arena for the exchange of knowledge and a space where westerners, for the first time since colonisation, are really listening to the ancestral wisdom of the people they colonised.

I must admit, it is with a certain ambivalence that I approach Western integration of indigenous cosmology. Our history is so full of arrogance and hubris that I feel compelled to tread lightly when I write about the wisdom of those whom we have deemed our others.

Some might say these ceremonies are just exotic shows for white tourists. And yes—sometimes they are. But there’s also a powerful revivalist current of ancient wisdom and a re-evaluation of indigenous knowledges that I feel honoured to be a part of.

Cause when has it been possible for an indigenous man to spit tobacco and alcohol on a white woman and be appreciated for it?

There’s clearly something here that is shifting hierarchies.

How can ancestral wisdom help us find a path forward?

Westerners are, for the first time, approaching other people as teachers rather than savages. We are realising that they have an understanding of the world that can help lost souls find a path back to purpose and meaning. And we are moving past distinctions between us and them, to recognise our shared humanity.

Listening to the wisdom of Búho and witnessing how he honors the traditions that are passed down through his family line made an impact on me.

Perhaps one of the biggest lessons that Búho and his Maya brothers and sisters have taught me is the importance of cultivating a healthy and respectful relationship with the lands we inhabit. To the mountains, rivers, and lakes. To the soil that feeds us.

Should we look to the sky or to the earth?

The Maya are grounded in Earth. For them, we all have our own Nahual—we all carry the energy of our spirit animals, the powerful beings that shape us.

The contrast could not be bigger from the Christian cosmology that permeates the West, and has taught us to see humankind as the pinnacle of creation. We are made in God’s image: separate from and superior to the world of animals, plants, and minerals. Closer to heaven than we are to earth.

Christianity sees to the sky. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons Silicon Valley is dreaming of Mars, while indigenous traditions are clamoring for us to take care of our planet. Our home. Our essence. Our spirit. We are not of this earth; we are it.

Maybe the real question isn’t whether we’ll colonise Mars, but whether we can learn to belong on Earth. What wisdom are you listening to?

This text is based on my PhD on happiness and the good life in the outdoors. To learn more about my research, check out this post where I share the story behind my journey.

This week I had one of the best days in a long time.

Not because I accomplished something but because I finally let my shoulders down and enjoyed a moment in the sun, watching my new friend Cyrisa spray paint an old shed while Dell and I did plunges in the lake.

You know that summer day sensation? That feeling of presence, stillness, and lack of concern that brings you straight back to childhood? That’s the sweet-spot, innit?

So why is it so hard to get there? Why are these days so few and far between?

Problem #1: The burnout society

We’ve never been richer, yet we feel poorer in spirit, tired, even depleted—chasing dopamine hits through scrolling and screens.

We’ve been raised to believe that happiness will arrive once we get the next job, partner, or house. This is the “happiness fantasy” of the American Dream, the ideal that Hollywood is selling us. But despite decades of economic growth and technological breakthroughs, depression and burnout rates keep climbing.

For Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han, the problem is rooted in our relation to achievement—in the constant push for self-optimisation and productivity. Han argues that we are burning out not because we’re oppressed, but because we are exploiting ourselves in the name of freedom, achievement, and yes—the pursuit of happiness.

He contrasts this with earlier forms of life that valued stillness, contemplation, and communal belonging. Burnout societies erode these possibilities, replacing them with performance, hyperactivity, and isolation.

I should know this very well—I’ve chased academic perfection to exhaustion. I’ve gobbled antidepressants and anxiety pills like candy on Christmast Eve.

Bupropion did the trick for me: it didn’t make me happier, but it gave me energy, focus, and motivation to keep performing at the office. To, in what now seems like divine irony, keep up the pace in my research on happiness and the good life.

Problem #2: The collapse of the future

One of the key insights from my frantic yet desperate (you’re right, there’s no contradiction between ‘em) deep dive into the philosophy of happiness was how, in the west, happiness is deferred to the future.

In modern, secular societies, the protestant ethos of striving so that one could reach eternal bliss in the afterlife was translated to this simple recipe: work hard now, enjoy life later—in the years between retirement and death.

Han shows us that the pursuit of future achievement as a path to happiness leaves us exhausted in the present, which partly explains the boomer generation’s frustration with millennials turning to instant gratification for their fulfilment.

Another problem, which also relates to the deferral of happiness to the future is that we’re increasingly living in a world of overlapping crises, where tomorrow looks grimmer than today: climate change, rising inequality, democratic failure, and political instability means that belief in progress is fading.

And when people loose faith in the future, the deferral of happiness seems like a poor strategy for fulfilment.

Problem #3: Believing that there are no alternatives to the status quo

Focusing on the present is not necessarily a bad thing. But if living like there’s no tomorrow sends us spiralling down the hedonistic path of instant gratification, problems tend to accumulate and leave us worse off than we already are: the dreaded negative feedback-loop.

Politically, the loss of faith in progress fuels projects that try to reaffirm growth as the central promise of modernity. Reactionary movements do so by promising a better future for that part of the population which is deemed deserving, while the pundits of green capitalism try to restore our faith in financial abundance by appealing to technical solutions.

At present, nobody has managed to propose a credible way out of this mess—at least not one that does not significantly disturb existing structures of power.

To make up for the lack of real solutions, the consensus among our leaders seems to be that there are no alternatives to the status quo. That some iteration of an economy built around growth is the only way forward: increased productivity, efficiency, output.

The solution: Reimagining happiness

But what if the answer is not to restore economic growth? What if the true crisis is a crisis of imagination?

One of Antonio Gramsci’s best-known concepts is that of the interregnum—a period of transition where the old order is dying while the new order has not yet been born. It is a difficult period to live through: without a vision of the future, we lose our bearings in the present.

Perhaps one of the solutions (yes, we need many) is to rethink happiness in such a way that it does not rely on perpetual growth, but on things that are already freely available to us?

Instead of chasing wealth or waiting for the future, we can learn to see happiness in what’s already abundant and available to us: community, nature, creativity, and belonging. Humanity’s shared wealth.

We can start chasing presence instead of success. Purpose instead of achievement. Human dignity instead of the millionaire lifestyle. This shift is not just personal—it’s cultural.

I know, this might not be the quick fix you were hoping for, but you know what? Quick fixes might be good for a moment, but they don’t work in the long run.

That’s why I’m inviting you to join me on this journey to rethink the meaning of happiness, wealth, and abundance—together.

Who knows, we might even have some fun along the way…