I know someone who lived as a bit of a vagabond for a while. As it seems to be with most of these sort of travellers, it is difficult to really get any answers from them, almost as if they drifted physically for so long that their minds are unable to stop, cease to drift, rest.

This guy is a missionary. He wears a faded brown leather jacket, dark jeans, comfortable worn shoes, an iconic middle-eastern looking scarf, and sometimes a dark hat, tipped over the glasses through which he’s observed the world drift past in all of its grit and dirt and grime.

This man has lived in the gutters and has conversed with emperors, prayed with prostitutes and waged wars with weapon wielding terrorists. He lived with the bag, now slung across his back as he talks to me, for long days, it’s only contents: a bible and a radio.

“It’s all you need you know… really, you don’t need all this stuff…” he says to me, as I muffle the sound of the R6000 touchscreen in my pocket notifying me of a social network newsfeed update.

He’s shifty, as if he’s conditioned such that he can’t stand still long enough for the cold that he left behind on those streets to enclose upon him.

Could I live like this? For all of my talk, could I actually leave my internet and my touchscreen, with its short, impractical battery life behind? My fridge with food readily available, my bed and heater, my bank card and an ATM always within reach? My car and my wardrobe? I’m not sure.

Even more than this, could I leave my ambitions for academic praise and intellectual glory? For the weathered life of the vagabond? Suddenly the opportunity to drop everything and follow a guy like this into the world avails itself to me and what do I say?

I don’t know.