But I thought the point of life was to be always happy, all the time...(says the whining child within, unable to deal with life's imperfections, the pockmarks of existence's slightly overcooked lattice cherry pie)!
I wonder what the Dali Lama would say...probably the same thing if you asked him what kind of pizza he'd like: "Make me one with all."
And all, the "all"--consisting of, drumroll please.......all. (To the unsatisfied pie-rejecting toddler within: that means even the crumbly bits you silly bugger...)
Why all this build-up re: the acceptance of life's imperfections? To be honest, it is kinda a big deal for me. A major stumbling block leading to frequent and palpable suffering.
(A side-note: I have never been around so many Brits in my entire life, except when in England. I keep saying bugger and rubbish and knackered and cheeky.....it actually doesn't suck).
Amusement: before moving to Surat, all the eager and naive prospective teachers here with me (including myself) Google image searched our new home and came out with this:
And when we arrived found this:
Not bad, but different, no? And ah, the shock of a new place begins to wane when you find that you must actually survive, and your version of surviving is different from their version...
The previous days have presented me with various challenges:
The gym doesn't open until 9 am.
You can't drink the water.
I can't seem to figure out how to unlock my cell phone.
I can speak a negligible amount of Thai. A useless, pointless amount.
It is hot. Very hot.
I was feeling the weight of these difficulties upon me. Why isn't everything like Charlottesville!? he whines. Out of all the places I've been--Thailand is perhaps the strangest. To me.
But ah! In the moment of wanting to open your lungs to the sky and curse the gods begging for the instant acquisition of a foreign language or even just one drop of rain...
You don't get what you want--but you DO get something infinitely more valuable:
Perspective. And a pair of big boy pants.
a) I signed up for this
b)Life is fucking hard dummy
c) It is actually pretty damn cool being here...
And so--to get to the gym? We go in the evenings.
To get water? We haggle with the water lady down the street cause we heard that a jug is only 10 baht and she is trying to sell it for 100, only to realize that 100 is the bottle deposit after she calls her "English-speaking" friend to explain and when we try to bring it home on our motorbike it falls off crashing to the street and bursting as we round the last bend to our house so we go back to buy another and this time all goes well but when we return home we realize we already have one...
To unlock the phone? We contact AT & T. We wait. We bask in the joy of not having a cell phone for the next few days!
We learn some bloody Thai! And use hand gestures in the meantime. Luckily you can just point to food. Oh, the food, yes, yes!
No anecdote to the heat yet. But Lord it beats the cold! I kinda like it actually.
A nice touch: one must remove their shoes before entering any building. So we're always prancing about in our stocking feet over here. A bit cute.
Some isms:
--writing someone's name in red ink means they'll die
--it is bad luck to get a haircut on Wednesday
--cheese does not exist
--toilet paper goes in the trashcan
And the best part is: I am really enjoying making lesson plans for the little tykes. Gonna teach 'em "ya'll." As in: hey, I like my job.
Today I rose early. Took a glorious run by the river. Worked. Picked up some luscious fruit from the market down the street. Ate said fruit. Went to the gym to get a membership. Going to relax with my housemate and take a Thai lesson. Meditate on my balcony as the evening sets in.
And why this obsession with qualification? Good, bad--these judgments: they only spawn resentment and disappointment.
In the presence of life's difficulties, both in Thailand and the States, I write you from this very spot, a page nearly pristine with naivete--sickness, ignorance--and a drop of acceptance's ink falls, and begins to seep, slowly but thickly, into the fibers of this page's previously unadulterated but unaware, unREAL world of fantasy...
Does that make sense?
Life is.
ทั้งหมดคือความสุขทั้งหมดที่มีความสุข ...
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| Rambutan |
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