The “Gap Yah” Crowd
There’s an interesting pattern that springs up on my social media every time I return home from one of the tuk south filming expeditions.
I continue to tell the stories that I want to tell and connect with a variety of people about interesting aspects of this blue dot we’re all spinning through space on, but I also appear to alienate a very particular type of human.
A Brit who responds with “Gap Yah”
I don’t know if this is a trend that occurs in other cultures? But it is rife in the UK. It stems from a video that went viral when I was a teenager of a man doing a comedy sketch as a faux enlightened traveller returning to his posh life in the Home Counties, after treating Africa like a petting zoo and talking about chundering everywhere.
Unfortunately, it’s very funny - and as with all humorous things has just enough truth running through it to make you crack a wry smile.
When I watched it, having done very little with my life, it was also comforting… “yeah… those guys who travel really are shallow and vacuous and dare I say it, worse than me.”
Then, of course, I went off to travel the world, it altered my perspective entirely and I discovered something I wanted to dedicate my life to. Storytelling.
Travelling led to novel experiences, experiences that I wanted to capture and share. storytelling seemed to satisfy this urge and by complete mistake I bumped into something that gave life meaning… connection with other humans.
I still think that sums it up quite nicely but I recently saw an idea from Nietzsche that may have summed it up better… show off.
He believed the thoughts that came to him as he moved through the world were unencumbered by preconceptions and routine and allowed him to shed a layer of cognitive skin for new things to push through.
I think this is why my Gap Yah turned into a gap decade.
I set off on my journey when I was 24 and this year I will turn 34… possibly on the islands of the Galapagos.
A moment that stuck with me from last year was standing beneath Mount Fitzroy in awe and learning the story of The Beagle.
Captained by the young Robert Fitzroy whose cabin mate was a fresh faced naturalist by the name of Charles Darwin. They set sail from England in early 1800s.
On the trip Fitzroy obsessed over the weather and storm systems in the hazardous waters around Tierra del Fuego. As he moved through the world, for almost five years, his brain began to shed the skin of someone who believed weather was an unpredictable act of God and started to wonder. Could this beast of nature, that killed so many, be tamed?
As he was discussing these ideas with Darwin he was being hit with multiple blows to his faith, as the young naturalist began to form ideas that would shake Fitzroy to his core. Darwin’s mind was crystallising the Origin of Species… the theory of evolution.
And when the beagle landed on the islands of the Galapagos Darwin’s eureka moment was etched into the story of humanity and the world.
The two men returned from their travels with two ideas that would change the world forever.
One invented the idea of the “Weather Forecast”
The other theorised how life on earth moved and morphed through time and space.
Have you seen those sculptures that look like a pile of rubbish from one angle, but form into a beautiful creature from another? It’s my belief that our lives are a lot like those piles of clutter. We all have meaning and beauty inside. You can find it by digging through the rubbish, moving it around, trying to find patterns or purpose. Or. You can take a few steps around it until its form reveals itself.
Don’t be deterred by the “Gap Yah” comments. If you’re lucky enough you might turn it into a Gap Decade… or a Gap Life