Tim Dennis "Individual freedom is quay to my life"
My Life and Dreams
I thought I should write a little about who I am as a person, many people see my expedition vehicle and website and don’t really know a lot about the person behind the concept.
I was brought up into a farming and road haulage family and from an early age I understood the meaning of nature and community, struggling with dyslexia at school and not fitting into the mainstream system provoked questions in myself about what school was about and what benefits it brought to me, I was very hungry for information visual information like magazines on real life, farming and logistics, later being sent to a boarding school in Shropshire where many of the pupils lived internationally I was able to see the diversity in the world and was offered the opportunity to visit Germany, China, and Hong Kong all before the age of 15.
Continuing my early career working in the logistics of racecourses in South Africa I travelled to Mauritius and other African destinations in aircraft and ships, this gave me very valuable information into international logistics and veterinary care of traveling animals.
Achieving things has been very important to me more than financial gain, like attaining my driving licence, motorcycle licence, heavy goods vehicle licence, and when my granny died investing the money in getting my pilot’s licence was a real major goal of achievement as leaving school with virtually no school qualifications I realised that these didn’t matter, everything that I wanted to learn was not what the school teaches you.
Money should not be a barrier to a young person’s learning for if somebody wants to be an airline pilot a ship’s captain or an engineer they should not be told that they cannot do this because they do not have the money to do it. they should not be encouraged into debt at an early age to pay back this kind of education, For me I had learning difficulties and I needed to achieve these goals in my own way, we are all very powerful individuals and learning and achieving comes at very different points in their lives, to say that a young person should achieve everything and know what they should do for their whole life by 16 or 18 years of age is ridiculous, I really hope that the education system changes in the future and more people have the time to home School their children or we have schools with very different curricula activities similar to some of the British public schools where you can learn to sail rear animals and more arts.
My brother died at a young age and my father when I was 23, having overcome this it gave me an even stronger sense of the purpose of life to live, and having been successful with my own transport business and making a home I was still not content with the life model that I had made based on current society ideals.
I find that in life you have to go back to the very basics in life and that is why I chose to sell up everything to get back to the core things that matter like food, shelter and water, I have never fitted in to the current monetary system, the pettiness and nonsensical things like filing tax returns and government red tape always seemed pointless. I always seem to be flowing in the opposite way in the river and I know I’m not the only one, and what really matters to me is to be true to myself and to start with I thought this was selfish but now I have developed my RamblingRat project and have had the opportunity to share my values and life story to everyone I meet, and importantly kids in education. I know that I am making a difference to everyone I meet.
Freedom is at the very core of my being like a dove that flies freely, if I maintain this freedom I am able to be productive and this inspires others in a very powerful way, I cannot tell you enough about the way I felt once I had shared all the things I once owned, it was a huge weight off my back, throughout life we put down all these chains and connections to worthless things and it’s these things that hold us back from our real life course, having travelled around the world and meeting communities from very different sections of society I am seeing the same themes of basic needs, on travelling above Mongolia many people live with resources and when I mean resources they do not live with money, in the West we share the stories by saying they have nothing but we are completely missing the point. They are very rich with the land, animals, and the way their communities interact, this is very inspiring to see having come from a very different system in the West. This provokes more questions about society and how we can change in the future.
I am very keen to continue my expedition for a long time to come, I am aware of how this should be self-sustaining I am aware of the costs of such an expedition and its environmental impact having used several thousands of liters of diesel and expensive shipping has led me to consider other ways to travel, I feel that the most sustainable way to live and travel would be on a ship or yacht, using the natural resource of the wind and desalinating the sea water for drinking, developing electricity from wind, solar and Hydro so this is something I’m looking into, an idea may be a traveling community at sea where people could come and go on their free will bringing to the expedition in their own knowledge and ideas.
Something else I am working on is to promote the use of electric cars in the future, is to circumnavigate the world in a production electric car, this would be a world’s first and would guide people into a new era of positive thinking.
I will continue to promote individuality in the media through my travel experiences, promoting the work of StreetKids International and other organizations that I would like to partner with, I am very keen to hear from other people about their stories and ideas for a better future.
From Tim Dennis
