What is the definition of a 'hippy'? I'm just curious because I've been discussing it lots recently, so I wanted to get your opinion too. I have spent the best part of a year in India now, and I know perceptions of this amazingly huge country vary enormously, from tourists scared to death by all the noise, rubbish, and attention-craving friendliness, individuals from around the world (usually aged 18-24 or 45+), who've come to 'find themselves' and take up a new life of spirituality, to the drunken youngsters finishing off their South East Asia tour, (with their garish elephant pants glued on), to the 5 star hotel guests who experience a world I can only imagine. There's one more group of lost nomads I also seem to meet regularly, the unfortunate souls from India and abroad who are travelling and socialising because they actually love it, but for whatever reason genuinely don't have a place they call home or any money in their back pocket.
I spent 6 weeks in Rishikesh last October and filled my mind and body with intense yoga practise, vegan food and healing energies. Some friends in England have called me a 'wannabe hippy' for my love of travel and stereotypically, yoga, particularly Indian and Asian culture. I don't profess to be a hippy in any way, but maybe I am? It seems to be a very subjective noun, and the more I discuss it the more conflicted I get. Yes I have veered from societal expectations of my childhood in South East England, but I also couldn't categorise myself somewhere else. Does that make me more, or less of a hippy? Last year I met a German traveller in Hampi who made my friend and I pretty angry. He started his dialogue by describing a hippy as someone who doesn't wash, and basically lives like a pig in mud. It got us thinking though about how to justify our own lives without encouraging a negative stereotype however (a bit like my discussion on the use of the word 'feminism'). So after this I looked up the Internets' definition of a hippy and the description was something along the lines of: 'An individual, most common in the 60s and 70s, who had long hair and wore beads'. I'm not sure who felt they had the authority to write this, but my guess is it certainly wasn't someone who has experienced a culture different to their own. A true 'hippy' is hard to define. Is it someone who only eats vegan, organic food, uses natural products for clothes, shoes and shower gel, and (crucially), lives in a van? Or perhaps it's someone (as we often joke), who got a lot of money from mummy and daddy so feel they don't need to work or provide for themselves or society? Or maybe, it's just someone who breaks away from societal norms? Remember, every culture and society have different 'norms', and that I guess is the essence, that every single one of us has grown up with different problems and privileges, so we are all continuing to grow slightly differently too. And that is why, in my view, a 'hippy' cannot be defined, because an epoch, a grouping of humans, is almost impossible where no two are the same anyway.
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About meI enjoy writing and have had experience from my degree and through working on news posts. I hope to use this blog as a summary of extraordinary things I've discovered or witnessed in everyday life. Archives
March 2020
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