The Paradox of Jedidiah Jenkins

If you haven’t heard of Jedidiah Jenkins, he’s a prolific travel writer who takes his readers well beyond simply describing the geography and towns of the places he ventures. During a 16-month, 10,000-mile bike ride from Oregon to Patagonia, he set out not to merely discover new sights and cultures, but also to embark on an awakening spiritual quest. One that was powered by taking risks, teetering on the unknown, and, first and foremost, making sure he was LIVING. Living as defined simply by stimulating his brain like never before. And what better way to do this than to quit his day job, and do away with the mundane and predictable world of routine. After all, says Jedidiah, “Routine is the enemy of time.”

And so, he began pedaling.

Undoubtedly, he is spot-on proclaiming the fact that so many of us are rutted in never-changing lives where our brains are being deprived of new exposures. We are not living. We are simply existing. Throughout his journey, Jedidiah’s senses became fully heightened as the staleness of routine had been replaced by an unshackled passion to drink up every waking moment of his new found freedom.

Instagram has been a major player in his adventures, allowing him to chronicle, at any moment, his thoughts to an internet-connected band of thousands of followers.

A bike, a cell phone, and a charger were the lifeblood of his journey. And it was those three things that would eventually seep into my mind, and raise an interesting curious irony I discovered that existed within his “Routine is the enemy of time” mantra.

It dawned on me that the very things that made him mobile, and generated his adventurous routine-free notoriety were, in fact, products of routine. His bike, cell phone, and charger were all, most likely, assembled in a factory setting by people, day in and day out, hunkered down in their nine-to-five routines. Thanks to their hard work, the lives of adventurists like Jedidiah have greatly benefited. You can even take it further by pointing out that all of his clothing and, for that matter, provisions, are all the result of routine.

Paradoxically, in Jedidiah’s case, while routine may be the enemy of time, it is also the good friend of the extraordinary.

However, as connected are the products of routine to Jedidiah’s escape from his workplace of routine, and how these products have played an active role in his spiritual quest, the fact remains that the experiences that Jedidiah reports to us are, without argument, priceless. His daily chronicles are fresh, vibrant, insightful, poetic, enduring, and deeply thought provoking. He is a master of his well-honed craft of articulately writing his thoughts that vicariously engage us in his travels. And it is the incredible essence of that innate talent that, no matter how connected or not connected to routine, makes us love his writings all the more.

Pedal on Jedidiah.

Copyright Ros Hill 2016