Here, we will be diving into a handful of the concepts presented. One disclaimer: These are only concepts that are specifically related to the nomadic lifestyle (many of the conepts in the book are critical, but less relevant to nomadism).

A little while back, I dove into the first chapter of The Prophet by Khalil Gibran — a wonderously captivating short book touching on all sorts of life philosophy. And many of the concepts, naturally, relate directly to the nomadic lifestyle.

In our first episode on the prophet, we covered the prophet’s story of arriving to the island of Orphalese and his 12 years there, plus why he’s leaving this beautiful place. Just before leaving, the people there ask him for more advice on all sorts of topics, many of which relate to nomadism. Specifically, we’ll touch on:

• Love
• Work
• Houses
• Buying & selling
• Freedom
• And still being nomadic at the end of the day

Listen to the full pod below. Or read on as I go one by one here!

On Love

One of the major attachments that might keep you from the nomadic lifestyle, so I’m always interested in developing this topic.

Here, the people of O ask the prophet to explain love. He says “when love beckons to you, follow him. Though his ways are hard and steep… “

First thing is a very non-nomadic approach: When you have a chance for love, have no doubt that this is a worthwhile effort. Although the prophet himself warns of the challenge of love.

I think for some of us, myself included, have trained ourselves to avoid attachment at all cost. The prophet is taking a totally different approach. This is a man who is traveling, but now he has 12 years worth of love with the people of O, and now he’s going to leave them as the nomad he is. But he’s not shying away.

When he says “the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you,” the idea here is that love isn’t going to be perfect, and it will likely end in hurt, but you should still go with it. Let go of your past and your inhibitions, and yield to love in the moment.

One of the lines that I like the most is: “Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.” Pretty interesting because here the prophet is admitting that even though he says you should follow love, it will probably shatter your dreams. This is one of the big reasons we avoid attachments in the first place — the possibility of dreams shattering. But even realizing this likelihood, the prophet still favors following love.

He then continues to say, “so even as love crowns you, so shall it crucify you.” Love is a double-edge sword, in a way, but if you have an opportunity, go for it. The sweet side of the sword is worth it.

“And then he assigns you to his sacred fire that you may become sacred bread for God’s sacred feast” — I don’t necessarily agree with everything here, and if I’m not mistaken, Khalil Gibran died from some addictions. Much like Alan Watts, two of the philosophers I most admire.

So here, with the sacred fire, in a way love can consume you as it shatters your dreams. But then again… If you don’t pursue it, what’s the point? Well, the prophet also addresses the idea of not going for love:

“But if in your fear you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure, then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing-floor, into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.”

So basically, what he’s saying is that though love has its huge risks and disadvantages, life without love is life that is not fully lived. You may laugh, but not all of your laughter; you may weep, but not all of your tears. You’re missing out on the full human experience if you’re not surrendering to love.

“When you love you should not say, ‘God is in my heart,’ but rather, ‘I am in the heart of God.’” 

Connecting to the divine, in a way, requires you to sometimes surrender to your attachments and even let them destroy your dreams.

On Work

“You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth.  For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life’s procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite.”

Many of us look at work as a necessary evil — something to pay the bills and keep us going. 

But the prophet says that if you disconnect from work, you become a stranger to the seasons. Again, it’s about disconnecting from the human experience.

According to him, work is a necessity. It’s a matter of respecting the seasons; we, as humans, cannot sustain ourselves without work. We have always fought for survival and it has always relied on some form of work.

Without work, he asks, what do we have? A disconnection from reality. He also says:

“When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music.”

Again, many of us have lost faith in our work. We just see it as a tool. But the encouragement here is to see it as art, as music. It almost doesn’t matter what it is you do; it’s about finding joy and beauty in even the most mundane activities. Find a way to create your music.

“Always you have been told that work is a curse and labour a misfortune.

But I say to you that when you work you fulfil a part of earth’s furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born,

And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life,

And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life’s inmost secret.”

Again, it’s a good reminder, especially those of us (like me sometimes) who are dreaming of an exit. And then what? It reminds me of the many cases of people who win the lottery or who sell their startup and then find their happiness diminishing.

“And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God.”

Once again, he’s encouraging us to be conscious about our work. About what it does to the world. About the beauty of creating.

“And what is it to work with love? It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.  It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.”

The idea is that we have to perceive work in whatever we do as something we are giving to our most loved people. Regardless of who we actually do it for. We might not even know the people we are working for. But if we look at it like an act of creation toward our loved ones, it can change our perception.

He continues with,

“It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit.”

And:

“But I say, not in sleep but in the over-wakefulness of noontide, that the wind speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks than to the least of all the blades of grass”

Again, it doesn’t really matter what we do — whether a giant oak or a blade of grass, the winds of life touches all of it. Just do it with love and joy and meaning.

To sum it up:

“And he alone is great who turns the voice of the wind into a song made sweeter by his own loving.  Work is love made visible.”

And a few other things on work:

“And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.”

This is a very strong sentence about burnout — you might as well stop working for the money and just beg for the money. That would be more honorable than working without your heart in it. I’m not sure I agree, but that’s an interesting perspective. He continues with his reasoning:

“For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man’s hunger.”

On Houses

“Your house is your larger body.  It grows in the sun and sleeps in the stillness of the night; and it is not dreamless. Does not your house dream? And dreaming, leave the city for grove or hilltop?”

This is a paradigm shift: He reminds us that your house is not a disconnection from nature, it actually is a part of nature. Your house is just as interested in being in nature as you are.

Instead of seeing it as four walls isolating you from the world, it’s an idea of the house being still part of the world around you.

“Would the valleys were your streets, and the green paths your alleys, that you might seek one another through vineyards, and come with the fragrance of the earth in your garments.”

The perfect situation, the prophet says, is for your neighborhood, your home, to be within nature itself. An encouragement to us to go outside the home and make a home of the world outside.

That said, he also acknowledges the importance of a home as a retreat.

“But these things are not yet to be.

In their fear your forefathers gathered you too near together. And that fear shall endure a little longer. A little longer shall your city walls separate your hearths from your fields.”

He’s being very critical of how we’ve assembled ourselves — of being too near to each other, in cities, disconnecting from nature. I don’t totally understand the “not yet to be” and “endure a little longer,” but maybe he thinks the artificial structures of concrete and cities will not exist forever. They only exist because of our forefathers. These artificial structures are fascinating… But perhaps they are not contributing to happiness.

And he continues:

“And tell me, people of Orphalese, what have you in these houses? And what is it you guard with fastened doors?

Have you peace, the quiet urge that reveals your power?”

The answer to that last question is probably not. It’s a story we tell ourselves. Why? Because…

“Have you only comfort, and the lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and becomes a host, and then a master?”

… Because of the lust for comfort that will never be fully satisfied. Comfort is appealing, but it quickly dominates us and becomes our master. We end up doing things not for our happiness or fulfillment or what have you, but for this master of comfort. In fact:

“Lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral.”

We are all stuck in our need for comfort and privacy — or at least the illusion of it — that it murders the passion of our souls!

“But you, children of space, you restless in rest, you shall not be trapped nor tamed.  Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast.  It shall not be a glistening film that covers a wound, but an eyelid that guards the eye.”

Houses may be necessary due to various fears and narratives and appearances of reality, but the way we need to look at houses is not as anchors but as masts. Something we can row with and change with.

Some people do use their homes as extensions of their bodies, as ways to meet new people, as ways to leverage their ability to connect with the worlds. But some of us close ourselves behind closed doors. Both are probably okay, but the prophet is an advocate of the former.

“You shall not dwell in tombs made by the dead for the living.

And though of magnificence and splendour, your house shall not hold your secret nor shelter your longing.”

No matter how luxurious, your home will not necessarily connect to your happiness.

“For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and the silences of night.”

Again, the idea of not letting your home disconnect you from nature and the life around you. A very nomadic chapter, through and through.

On Buying & Selling

“It is in exchanging the gifts of the earth that you shall find abundance and be satisfied.  Yet unless the exchange be in love and kindly justice, it will but lead some to greed and others to hunger.”

This connects to what we talked about with work: Making it counts. If you’re involved in an exchange, you should make sure to do so in a way that is joyful.

He continues, “And if there come the singers and the dancers and the flute players, – buy of their gifts also.”

Each of them is buying and selling something, and we should try to ensure they are compensated for their creation — no matter what they’re creating.

“And before you leave the marketplace, see that no one has gone his way with empty hands.”

A word of warning about losing. It’s on those of us who don’t lose to keep a caring eye out for those who do, either by helping or teaching or whatever is necessary. Not easy to do, but we can all agree the goal is admirable.

Laws

The concept of laws is interesting because it connects a bit to definitions that we’ve spoken so much about. The prophet says,

“You delight in laying down laws,  Yet you delight more in breaking them.  Like children playing by the ocean who build sand-towers with constancy and then destroy them with laughter.”

This is a bit more for those of us afraid to break from norms. The prophet is laughing at these norms, he knows they aren’t true — they’re basically sandcastles that the ocean will one day wash away. In fact:

“But while you build your sand-towers the ocean brings more sand to the shore,  And when you destroy them, the ocean laughs with you.”

The prophet is encouraging us to destroy the laws the don’t mean anything to us, especially in regards to how we conduct our own lives.

“People of Orphalese,” he goes on, “you can muffle the drum, and you can loosen the strings of the lyre, but who shall command the skylark not to sing?”

He is interested in natural laws, connected to the skylark here, but not the ways in which we distort or misinterpret reality. There is often a disconnect between how we perceive things to be and how they are in reality. That reality, for the prophet, is often rooted in the nature around us.

On Freedom

This chapter’s difficult, because it doesn’t necessarily connect to my beliefs, but it’s still incredibly interesting. The prophet says,

“At the city gate and by your fireside I have seen you prostrate yourself and worship your own freedom,

And my heart bled within me; for you can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfillment.

You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief.”

It’s an interesting approach, saying that the desire for freedom is a massive problem. The idea that when you desire so much, that desire itself is a problem. If we are in such a need of freedom, we are actually disconnecting from our human experience — the experience of caring and suffering. The desire to be free can be seen as a desire to escape from human reality.

I find this interesting because the prophet is saying that some of our attachments, once we disconnect from them, cause us to not be ourselves anymore.

“But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound.”

To him, a victory is not to be free but to be tied with attachments, with problems, with grief. And still rise above all those things, “naked and unbound.” Only in a situation where you have limitations can you show your real freedom, not when you run from attachment.

“In truth that which you call freedom is the strongest of these chains, though its links glitter in the sun and dazzle the eyes.

And what is it but fragments of your own self you would discard that you may become free?”

Here, as an anti-freedom-seeker, he is saying that when you are actually breaking free, you’re breaking away from yourself.

“And if it is a despot you would dethrone, see first that his throne erected within you is destroyed.

And if it is a care you would cast off, that care has been chosen by you rather than imposed upon you.

And if it is a fear you would dispel, the seat of that fear is in your heart and not in the hand of the feared.”

He’s talking about our response of outrage to things, trying to break away from injustices. The idea is that these things exist not so much in reality, but inside of us. Inside of our perception of fear, but not actually in the thing we’re afraid of. He ends by saying,

“These things move within you as lights and shadows in pairs that cling.  And when the shadow fades and is no more, the light that lingers becomes a shadow to another light.”

In a way, when you’re trying to disconnect from shadows, the light that you’re running away to will also become a shadow in due time.

So, again, he is anti the lust for freedom here. I think I connect to a few of the concepts here, namely the importance of having a few attachments and rising above them (rather than being totally free of any attachments). Because if you are totally free of attachments, once again, you’re a little bit running away from life itself.

The Farewell

The story concludes with the prophet leaving Orphalese, and saying the following:

“We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us.”

It’s an ultra-nomadic part. And the prophet was a nomad, to be clear. Even with some of the anti-nomadic sentiments here. Sure, we have to respect and take care of our attachments. But at the same time, there’s an understanding that we are wanderers and we are ever-seeking the lonelier way.

This same person who preached to us about love also admits our desires here are the lonelier way. And then:

“Even while the earth sleeps we travel.  We are the seeds of the tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind and are scattered.”

What other sentence can sum up the nomadic experience?So what have we learned… absolutely nothing, probably. Life is confusing, but at the same time, it’s always a fascinating experience. Please go read The Prophet yourselves, it’s very much worth the read beyond what we’ve discussed here. And let us know below if you’ve made any sense out of any of the teachings discussed!