It’s interesting to see my changes in perspective after #BurningMan. Living in the desert wipes away the worries that exist in the default world. One’s worries about long-term things like money, household, relationships, and redundancy in your cloud infrastructure are replaced with much more immediate concerns: My tent is blowing away. I have to move 30kg of gear on foot. There is no coffee. I am on fire.

The stresses of the desert are often immediate, specific, and finite. This is how stress is supposed to work; consequently I find the entire ordeal a very relaxing one. I find myself no longer worried or anxious unless there is an immediate, specific need requiring my attention.

Looking at my accumulated strata of to-do lists, I find myself thinking “this isn’t such a big deal”, or “these things don’t really matter”, especially when it come to things which I’ve gone without, and did not miss. The brain will adapt itself so that you’ll worry about whatever things exist in your present experience. Changing your experiences can let you look at your stressors in an entirely new light.

Unfortunately I know that these changes in my outlook are temporary, at some point I’ll go back to having a similar set of worries and concerns as I did before the burn. But until then, I feel like a mental badass: unassailable and calm. There is a long tradition of humans going on pilgrimages and through hardship in order to gain enlightenment and peace; I feel I now have a small insight into the nature of those journeys.

~ Paul