writing – Page 3 – Another Adventure

Living Inside the Outside

What happens when you move into the outside of your comfort zone??

Having passed the six month bench mark of living in Thailand (actually, I’m going on month EIGHT already…amazing..), I recently found myself in a self-prescribed “funk.” After the country-hopping adventures of Christmas break, I was back into teaching, finding myself caught up in a routine of “get up, go to class, come home, eat, sleep, repeat.” I was reminded of the late David Foster Wallace’s college graduation speech given at Kenyon back in 2005 on the importance of remembering to look up from the steering wheel every once and a while to appreciate where you are.

Even though I am in a different country, I still fell victim to that nasty habit of taking everything for granted and becoming weary of the everyday, the “mundane;” the repetitiveness of work and the pressures of life got to me. I was “in a funk.”

So what do you do when you suddenly move into the outside of your comfort zone? What do you do when everything that was new and strange becomes normal, routine, and slightly predictable?

I struggled to answer this question. For a few weekends I hibernated, shut the world out, watched Youtube videos and ate bowls of noodles. And sometimes, a girl just needs a curry-noodle-Boy-Meets-World kind of weekend. I’m okay with that.

Me on a Friday afternoon.

But eventually, I had to emerge from my hole in the wall and breathe in the smelly air of Bangkok, because at a certain point I ceased to recharge, and I ended up hurting myself by isolating myself beyond what was necessary. This is something, I’m noticing after many years, I tend to do.

Fortunately, life has a way of meeting you where you are, grabbing your hand and pulling you along when you least expect it and most need it. And, by the Grace of God, I found amazing ways to cope. I reached out to friends who, it turned out, were experiencing similar feelings. Together we vowed to make the most of our time here, and a few weeks later, I can honestly say that things are picking up with amazing speed!

It was not an easy transition–but I wonder if any transition is easy. But, when you pick up your head long enough to realize “this is water,” you will be amazed at what you can discover. So, in my case, I decided to take a walk down a street I had never been down before, and guess what I discovered?

WATER!

Yes. I had been staying with a friend in a local area of the city, and last Friday night I found myself alone and on the cusp of another “funk.” So I left the apartment to go to 7-11 for some milk, but instead, I turned right instead of left and set out on a nice, long, solo walk.

I began to notice things I had never noticed before, like coffee shops and karaoke bars (no surprise there), apartment buildings and even a university–who knew? Then, I came to a bustling, unpaved intersection with no hope of crossing it. So I watched the cars and semi-trucks whiz past me at break neck speed, and I thought to myself “this is so different from home.” And I was happy. I was happy to be looking at a traffic scene, witnessing a cross-section of local lives before which point I had never come into contact. And I felt different…calmer…more accepting of my current reality.

Finally, when the traffic ceased, I raced across the road and continued my journey. It did not last very long, because I came to a dead end. How strange, I thought, that this seemingly busy road suddenly dead-ends. Why would it do that? I could have just turned back and accepted this peculiarity, but I was not ready to go home. So I kept walking, and that’s when I discovered the pier.

There’s a PIER at the end of my street. A pier, where boats and water taxis come and go, where people get on and off and are swept away down the Chao Praya into other pockets of Bangkok, unbeknownst to little ole ignorant me. Of course none of these occurrences depended on me seeing them; they, like everything else God made, existed before and without me. Yet to me, this pier is special, because I learned something very valuable that night.

I never have to accept things just as they are, or resign myself to the fact that “this is all there is,” because “this” is never all there is. Somewhere down the street, there is a boat dock waiting to float me down another river I never even knew existed.

Backpackers Unite!

Backpackers unite!
Crowds of tall, blonde and
curly, strong merry wanderers,
balloon pants wave and
tattoos adorn.

See their beards and long hair
blow in the dusy wind,
Lit cigarettes fall to the earth
beneath elephant feet
and ancient temple sand-stones.

“Another beer, please!” They cheers–
Proust! Salud! from the balcony
as dark skinned locals pour
them shots
and dance
the merengue.

““““““`
The List

“One, two, trois!”
Take a photo, quick,
before you get elbowed away by eager tourists
out of the spotlight.

Here it is, folks! The famous TOMB RAIDER temple.
Never mind that it honors the Buddha,
a Hindu god incarnate.
LAURA CROFT WAS HERE
as if spray graffiti and internet memes mark
the spot.
Quick! Take a picture!
It might
disappear.

Addicted to the Yea-Sayers

Maybe I thought moving to Thailand would be “hard,” but that is nothing compared with the internal metamorphosis of the post-college existence.

**Warning: Existential Crisis Below**

As my dear friend Calen reminded me the other day, “don’t trick yourself into thinking that if you were in the United States, you wouldn’t be feeling these things, because you would. They would just be different.”

Ok, she was right. And life after college is hard.

Is it hard in the material sense? Ok, no. No, in that sense, I am very blessed. But for me–and this might be different for you–material things are really pretty meaningless. I mean, I like having a house and a roof and shelter and clothing and food–and I recognize that many people do not have these things. But I don’t derive much meaning or sense of purpose in my life from owning things. I’ve always been someone who likes doing things. I get my sense of purpose from trying other things and from making other people happy. Ok, maybe this is not wise.

In my life, I was always surrounded by people who loved me and who often knew me better than I knew myself. I felt safe with these people; I could let my guard down, just be myself, and not have to think about how my behavior was affecting them. I never felt like I was standing on ceremony in my own home.

In college, I worked, but I always stuck to things I was good at, making it easier for me to feel successful at what I wanted to do. I have always shied away from difficult things, because I hate feeling like a failure. I hate messing up.

Ok..but what now? What am I supposed to do with these feelings? Suddenly, I’m no longer surrounded by people who know me better than I know myself. When I came here, literally no one knew me and I knew no one. That means starting completely from scratch. Maybe that’s exciting if you have a lot of baggage, but for me, I left everything I knew behind. And I left everything that was easy behind.

Perhaps I seriously took for granted just how wonderful my previous employers, coworkers, classmates, teachers and friends have been. But more and more I run into blank walls with no instructions, no past experience to draw from, and no one explaining to me how to tackle this. It’s just me.

Ok, and maybe one day when all is said and done and I have a lot of cats and sweaters I will look back at this point in my life and laugh, thinking, “How naive I was. Everything was so easy then!” But at this moment in my life, things are difficult in a way that surrounds and sometimes consumes me, because I can’t walk away from it. I can’t choose not to live, because I don’t like feeling like a failure. I can’t choose not to do this job because I don’t like doing things that are hard and not easy. I suppose I could. But I’m not going to.

I’d really like to know–how have some of you transitioned from a cozy, predictable environment, to a life that’s habitually difficult? How do you deal with the walls?

"They Have Pizza in Thailand?"

In trying to convince my parents that I am living comfortably as a teacher in Thailand, I’ve been telling them all the familiar things. “Yesterday, I went shopping. I bought linens, and I had pizza for dinner with friends.”

“Really? They have pizza in Thailand?”

They do indeed.

But make no mistake about it; I am in a foreign country, and with that come many highs and lows. I feel so comfortable at church, speaking English with my friends, and yet as soon as I enter a van I am dropped down to the level of humility it takes to remind me that my language is like that of a baby. The little girl who collects the money tells me to sit in the back, where there is room. I know this by the nod of her little head, not by the words she speaks; those I cannot yet understand. “Abac Bangna?” I ask her. “Yee-sip hah,” she responds. Twenty five baht. I pay my fee and scoot to the back of the crowded van with my many bags of groceries, linens, and leftover street food; my spoils from the weekend. And yet I was too focused on making it to the right bus stop to remember that I had extra food in hand, and perhaps the homeless man curled up on the street corner might like it. I gave him my peanuts, but I forgot that I had more to give.

I always have more to give, and yet I always feel like I am not enough. I grew up thinking this way about God, too. No matter what I do, I can never be a good enough Christian. I can never make God love me enough, because I constantly fall short of His will. But in thinking this way, this dangerous mind game that the devil likes to play, I forgot that I have already been redeemed. He already loves me, no matter what.

That love comes and goes in Thailand, like it does in any place. We tie our love in with our expectations of good grades, praise and recognition for our worldly achievements. I tie my self-worth to my ability to be a good teacher, a good person, a good daughter and sister and friend. I am never enough.

But I am enough. I am enough, sitting here on my patio. My little bedroom is enough, situated here in Abac’s campus. And living in Thailand is enough.

They have pizza in Thailand. They have soda and hamburgers and Iphone 6’s (on pre-order). They have Bible studies–Thailand is remarkably accepting of other religions, unlike some other places I have lived. Thailand is enough.

Yet Thailand is still growing in many ways, and I am growing along side it. Maybe our relationship will only be temporary, but I will love it and love my time here in whatever capacity God gives me. I will not be perfect. But if I could be, I wouldn’t need God.

And then I never would have come here in the first place.

I am not enough without God. But with him, I am everything because He is everything. When He is in me, I am enough, through the mispronunciations and the mistakes and the stress. I am enough because God made me. And He will always be enough.

Tonight I’m feeling grateful for religious freedom; it’s a rarity in many, many places. I am vexed by more things than I understand, but perhaps I should also be grateful for the simple pleasures, like sun shining on freshly fallen snow. They certainly don’t have that in Thailand 🙂 But if God made the whole world the same, no one would feel compelled to travel, would they?