6 'Unexpected' Lessons from Burning Man

This is what I told the barista about Burning Man (her first time hearing about it)

I found myself trying to explain Burning Man to a barista at my local coffee shop. She had no prior knowledge of the event and I had just gotten back from my first burn. It was a challenging task. My reply ended up being something like a list of things I noticed/ lessons I learned.

I did my thing and she said:

Woah! I’m intrigued, inspired and also scared.

Here is what I said — with a little extra. Enjoy.

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1) What is your offer?

Offerings are a big part of the Burning Man community. It’s great. It makes for a beautiful environment. Thousands of people contribute to the community with their offerings.

Some hot tea on a cold night. A popsicle on a hot day. A massage. A musical jam room. A cave of collected stuffed animals to cuddle with. A human petting cage, where you are tied up and blindfolded while 10 people pet you (yea, some of them are kinky). Thousands of offerings. It’s a feast.

This got me thinking. 

We are all contributors, whether or not it’s intentional, you are contributing something to your environment. Sometimes it’s very tangible like at Burning Man. Sometimes it’s just your presence, the energy you bring to a room.

Before Burning Man, I hadn’t given this much thought. This is no bueno because unintentional contributions could be negative. And I’m sure you don’t want to contribute negativity.

Anyway, I plan on being more intentional with how I contribute to the world and the people around me.

This was the biggest lesson for me, so you can stop reading now if you like. But I’ve got 5 more if you are a little curious.

Onward.

2) What are you offering your future self?

Offerings to others are cool. Offerings to yourself are also cool.

Living is more challenging on the playa so you need to plan everything. Do I have enough water? Where am I sleeping tonight? Are my lights working for when it gets dark? (lights are super important at Burning Man) Where did I leave my bike?

Things that seem trivial in the default world, become gold.

A simple action like putting a few hi-chews in your pocket before you leave camp could provide you and your group with a silly amount of joy late into the night. The smallest things make a big difference.

This is less noticeable in the default world because almost everything we need is at our fingertips. It’s easy to forget about planning for your future self in a world of instant gratification. 

In the default world, this could look like: meal prep, getting your errands done during the week so your weekend is free, or a bunch of other things I’m sure you can think of.

The point is, I’m starting to plan for my future self with more intention. Big and small. Maybe you will too?

3) What are you abstaining from?

At about 2 am on the Playa, I found a bar serving Pho. It was cold out and I hadn’t eaten much that day so it hit the spot. In exchange, I gave the Pho provider a hi-chew, and she lit the fuck up. She was so stoked about this hi-chew that she rushed around the bar and gave me a big hug. Something so simple provided this woman so much joy. I couldn’t help but think — why can’t we always appreciate small gestures with this much passion?

I suppose it’s all context. She was working this bar for hours, likely only consuming Pho. A sweet, juicy, and chewy delight wasn’t accessible to her, she couldn’t just stop by a gas station.

This brought me to a conclusion. The abundance of chewy delights in the default world, makes people appreciate them less. The chewy delight is of course a proxy for anything abundant in the default world. Pizza, ice cream, great content, hot showers, and air conditioning. All magical things we take for granted until they are inaccessible to us.

Perhaps this fact is one of the reasons why many cultures have abstinence rituals.

The point is, for several months of the year, I will abstain from hi-chews, not for religious or health reasons, but because I know they will taste 1000x better when I get to eat them again.

4) What are you doing with your hands?

So, already I knew people were awesome. In fact, the People Are Awesome YouTube channel is one of my favorites. But damn. The awesomeness presented at Burning Man is on another level. Lots of cool stuff but the interactive art is what did it for me.

Laugh, cry, play, explore, be confused, get shocked (literally and figuratively, one of the art pieces sent a small current through you). It was a massive top hat with drums in the middle. When you put your hand on it, a current was sent through you and one of the drums was played.

Massive art installations like a shipwreck with a big glowy serpent (which of course was the culprit), tiny ones like the Stonehenge made of Twinkies, and powerful ones like one made of street signs with bullet holes in them — taken from all over Ukraine (it was called I’m Fine, you can see it below). This piece also played a sound every time a siren went off in the country. It was especially powerful for my wife Iuliia who is from Ukraine with her father in the army.

And my personal favorite. The rings. This was a row of about 50 huge LED rings that you could ride your bike through. These rings were hooked up to music and sent pulses through them that matched the speed of sound. Hard to describe, but riding your bike through them felt like going through a portal to another dimension. Yea. Ridiculous and beautiful.

What’s my point on this one? I guess it’s just that I love people. Also, I plan to make more things with my hands — I’m on the computer too much and want to make physical things that humans can interact with.

5) Where are you stopping along the way?

It’s challenging to make plans at Burning Man. There are magical distractions everywhere you look. So, after the 2nd day, we decided as a group to only make soft plans. Meaning, we agreed on a general direction and welcomed all stops along the way.

We would ride towards a destination but every person in the group had the power to force a pit stop. See some cool art? Great, let’s check it out. Want to hop in a sauna in the desert? Weird, but okay let’s do it (this one was oddly incredible because the desert felt cold when you got out). Hear some music you like. Let’s go jam.

This is how we did the burn and it was great.

After some reflection — I realized, the default world is kinda like this. Plans don’t always work out. The way we reach the destination is often much different than the plan. The point is to keep moving and enjoy the journey.

I often get so wrapped up in my objective that I forsake the world around me. Missing out on the pit stops and forgetting to enjoy the path. So I’m going to take our soft plan method and apply it to the default world. Let’s see how it goes.

6) Are you smelling the flowers?

This was it for me. The highlight. The magic. The sauce. Whatever you want to call it.

A lot is going on at Burning Man and upon reflection, my favorite part was the micro-interactions with people. With both strangers and friends.

Here’s what I mean by micro-interactions: We found a woman sitting on a throne at 2 am in the deep playa serving tea, so we spent 10 minutes drinking tea with her. We found a neon forest, danced a bit, and then group hugged around one of the neon trees. We stop by a friend’s RV and learn about an art project he has spent the last 3 years developing.

This relates to the soft plans a bit.

It turns out, that the moments I cherish the most aren’t when I was dancing my face off at the big parties (like I thought it would be).

It’s the in-between moments with other humans.

I think I’ve gravely overlooked the in-between moments in the default world.

Not anymore. I’m now stopping to smell the flowers. Do you feel me?

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This is more or less what I told the barista.

Bye for now.

-Tyler Donahue