As many do, I arrived back home wondering just how I could possibly maintain the slightest degree of happy-go-lucky curiosity that accompanied me across the world. How could I integrate freedom and openness into my very definitive, everyday world? There was but one answer. Keep living like a traveler in a foreign land. Stop thinking. Resolve not to define anything. Let the heart lead the way.
Easier said than done.
Just about everyone I run into wants to know about my trip. "How was it?" they ask. "Is it over?" I wonder? How can I possibly answer these questions without thinking, without defining and without ending my journey? Is that possible? The truth is, it's not. My journey isn't over. I have only just arrived and in a moment I will soon be departing again. To answer these questions means getting off at this station and watching my train pull away so that I can see what it was and where it went and where it is going. I'm not willing to that. So instead, I find myself answering these inquiries with somewhat hollow exclamations like "Amazing!" "Life Changing!" "Transformative!" "Eye Opening" "Clarifying" which might all be true but hardly capture the experience of being fully absorbed in the moment.
Pressures from outside influences are not the only challenges I face in carrying on. I am also greeted with a multitude of personal concerns upon arrival back in Seattle... mainly those of life purpose, love, career, money, self-worth and something else I can't quite put my finger on right now. It would be REALLY easy for me slip into a state of worried anxiety and try to think and plan my way out of the fright, the fear and the massive uncertainty that just so happens to be the carriage of the moment. But for now, I choose not to.
Somehow or another I choose attending to my spirit over attending to my ego. I choose to care for my needs before I care for the needs of others, I choose not knowing over knowing, I choose trust over fear and each time my head begins to spin thought uncontrollably I choose to feel the restless immediacy in my chest instead. It is raw, it is vivid and it is undeniably true. Something tender is breaking through.
It starts out with me unexpectedly announcing my desire to end a work relationship which significantly lowers my already low level of income, it opens the door of change on my romantic life which is directly tied into my living situation and turns into a long overdue letter of apology asking for forgiveness for something I don't expect to be forgiven for. But the most interesting thing is that I don't think about doing any of these things at all, they just happen. In fact, if I had thought about any of them, I probably wouldn't have followed through on a single one of them.
All of these reckless shifts spilling out of me, all of these old patterns breaking up, which I always imagined would be so terrifying to experience and would leave me in pieces, these shifts aren't my whole world falling apart, these shifts are my whole world coming together.
January 22, 2011
January 15, 2011
The Long Journey
I am in transit. I mean this physically, but there is no escaping the metaphor of such an idea for me. While I departed Melbourne for Singapore this morning and head off to Toyko and Seattle tomorrow, the transition really began early this morning with the realization that I can be a total and complete brat, but let's give that a little context, shall we?
I started out on this journey for many reasons, in search of a bigger world, to explore the international yoga scene, to seek out work, to develop more love for myself and to cultivate more trust for the world around me. There were many unknowns at the start of this trip and a lot of fears I had to face along the way.
I've never been to any of these countries before. I honestly don't know a single person who lives in these places and barely know anyone who has been to them. I was highly uncertain about the status of my romantic life and a bit uncertain about my ability to cope with it all, but I had to do it and I knew I'd be the better for it. Or, it would kill me.
Before I left I had a conversation with a dear friend and told her that I really looked forward to the transformative process, of stepping off the plane and knowing with every inch of myself that whatever was about to happen was beyond my control and irreversible. Owing to this I reasoned that I would be forced into shedding some outdated notion of myself that had been hanging on for far too long. Thank god.
The thing was that I didn't really know what this notion was. I only knew that it had been slowly falling away for a while and needed that one little last push to be complete. I looked forward to it's arrival, whatever it was. My dear friend lamented that those kinds of breakthroughs seemed to occur less and less with age. I felt disappointed by this, but relieved all the same and proceeded to go about my trip in my own, singular way. I explored the places I arrived in with great curiousity, I struck up conversation with just about anyone I met and everything seemed pretty hum-dee-dum until I arrived in Australia - as you may recognize from my last post.
All of a sudden everything was different - I wasn't alone in my own perfect bubble, I wasn't in charge of what happened when, I was in relationship, intimately, with another person and I resisted it, tooth and nail. If you've ever been in a relationship that was going south you know how easily it is to expect things to be a certain way. Well, two ways actually. From one side you hope that things will be as good as they once were and from the other side you fear that they'll be as bad as you last left them, which doesn't leave a whole hell of a lot of options. If it isn't one, it's got to be the other. We repeat our own history.
I've been doing it for years, especially in the context of my romantic relationships. It mostly involves feelings of being under valued, dissatisfied and angry. This isn't news for me. I already knew this and I already had pinpointed very distinct reasons why I felt this way, which involved my (you know) family, childhood and upbringing. I don't blame my family, I wholeheartedly believe they did the best they could, I just had yet to figure out how to do the best I could.
So I had a pretty awful time in Australia. I fought with my boyfriend, who is probably the most easy going guy in the world, everyday. I repeatedly told myself that we did not work, that he wasn't interested in even the simplest of things that interested in me, that we have nothing in common, that we have no connection and that we have no business being together. I went in wanting to prove that he couldn't love me the way I want to be loved and I ended up not letting him love me in any of the ways that he does. But the thing is that he hasn't stopped loving me and I only find myself loving him more. In the moments when I actually stop resisting what and who and how we are, I feel really, really solid about us.
So for my last evening in town we went out to the pub with a friend of his. It was awkward, I felt uncomfortable and I didn't want to feel that way any longer, so I left. I walked around for an hour in frustration and eventually ended up at another pub where I had a really engaging conversation with a blues guitarist I may never meet again. I went home. My guy was concerned and disappointed. I was indignant. We fought.
Then, somewhere between the closing of my eyes, the dawning of the morning light and him telling me things about myself I didn't want to hear for the 1,000th time, I awoke to the fact that he is actually spot on. I can be insufferable. I am childish and cruel and unreasonable and with him, I am all of these things. The ugliest part is that for so long I blamed him for all of this. I believed that he brought out the worst in me, when actually he just brings out the truth in me. If I wasn't an insufferable brat, he wouldn't be able to draw that out. Ever. But I am and he does - again and again and again.
What strikes me most about this revelation is that in the process of setting out to expand my world and love myself more I ended up face to face with some of the gnarliest bits of myself. And while at first glance it may appear that I arrived at the exact opposite end of the spectrum I was aiming for, I don't feel that way at all.
I know that sometimes the only way to reach the other side is to walk on up to those horrid demons, trust that they are merely ghosts and step right on through.
I started out on this journey for many reasons, in search of a bigger world, to explore the international yoga scene, to seek out work, to develop more love for myself and to cultivate more trust for the world around me. There were many unknowns at the start of this trip and a lot of fears I had to face along the way.
I've never been to any of these countries before. I honestly don't know a single person who lives in these places and barely know anyone who has been to them. I was highly uncertain about the status of my romantic life and a bit uncertain about my ability to cope with it all, but I had to do it and I knew I'd be the better for it. Or, it would kill me.
Before I left I had a conversation with a dear friend and told her that I really looked forward to the transformative process, of stepping off the plane and knowing with every inch of myself that whatever was about to happen was beyond my control and irreversible. Owing to this I reasoned that I would be forced into shedding some outdated notion of myself that had been hanging on for far too long. Thank god.
The thing was that I didn't really know what this notion was. I only knew that it had been slowly falling away for a while and needed that one little last push to be complete. I looked forward to it's arrival, whatever it was. My dear friend lamented that those kinds of breakthroughs seemed to occur less and less with age. I felt disappointed by this, but relieved all the same and proceeded to go about my trip in my own, singular way. I explored the places I arrived in with great curiousity, I struck up conversation with just about anyone I met and everything seemed pretty hum-dee-dum until I arrived in Australia - as you may recognize from my last post.
All of a sudden everything was different - I wasn't alone in my own perfect bubble, I wasn't in charge of what happened when, I was in relationship, intimately, with another person and I resisted it, tooth and nail. If you've ever been in a relationship that was going south you know how easily it is to expect things to be a certain way. Well, two ways actually. From one side you hope that things will be as good as they once were and from the other side you fear that they'll be as bad as you last left them, which doesn't leave a whole hell of a lot of options. If it isn't one, it's got to be the other. We repeat our own history.
I've been doing it for years, especially in the context of my romantic relationships. It mostly involves feelings of being under valued, dissatisfied and angry. This isn't news for me. I already knew this and I already had pinpointed very distinct reasons why I felt this way, which involved my (you know) family, childhood and upbringing. I don't blame my family, I wholeheartedly believe they did the best they could, I just had yet to figure out how to do the best I could.
So I had a pretty awful time in Australia. I fought with my boyfriend, who is probably the most easy going guy in the world, everyday. I repeatedly told myself that we did not work, that he wasn't interested in even the simplest of things that interested in me, that we have nothing in common, that we have no connection and that we have no business being together. I went in wanting to prove that he couldn't love me the way I want to be loved and I ended up not letting him love me in any of the ways that he does. But the thing is that he hasn't stopped loving me and I only find myself loving him more. In the moments when I actually stop resisting what and who and how we are, I feel really, really solid about us.
So for my last evening in town we went out to the pub with a friend of his. It was awkward, I felt uncomfortable and I didn't want to feel that way any longer, so I left. I walked around for an hour in frustration and eventually ended up at another pub where I had a really engaging conversation with a blues guitarist I may never meet again. I went home. My guy was concerned and disappointed. I was indignant. We fought.
Then, somewhere between the closing of my eyes, the dawning of the morning light and him telling me things about myself I didn't want to hear for the 1,000th time, I awoke to the fact that he is actually spot on. I can be insufferable. I am childish and cruel and unreasonable and with him, I am all of these things. The ugliest part is that for so long I blamed him for all of this. I believed that he brought out the worst in me, when actually he just brings out the truth in me. If I wasn't an insufferable brat, he wouldn't be able to draw that out. Ever. But I am and he does - again and again and again.
What strikes me most about this revelation is that in the process of setting out to expand my world and love myself more I ended up face to face with some of the gnarliest bits of myself. And while at first glance it may appear that I arrived at the exact opposite end of the spectrum I was aiming for, I don't feel that way at all.
I know that sometimes the only way to reach the other side is to walk on up to those horrid demons, trust that they are merely ghosts and step right on through.
January 7, 2011
A is Australia (and arguments, too)
Ah, Australia. After 4 weeks in SE Asia, being back in a Westernized country feels like a really good thing for several reasons.
1) Fresh air. My respiratory system totally had it with motorbike exhaust, burning coconut husks and smoldering incense, so much so that I arrived in the land of Oz with a sore throat and a stuffy nose.
2) Clean water. Not only can I drink from the tap again and brush my teeth without bottled water, but I can actually open my mouth in the shower. It is the little things that make a big difference.
3) Pizza! Actually, any version of real Western food. After rice and noodles and noodles and rice and rice and rice and rice and noodles, I was ready for something else. As it turns out, my first meal in Australia was Laksa Noodle Soup. Go figure.
At the same time, there are several reasons why I'm not so certain about being here.
1) It's not a quite as foreign as the rest of the places I have traversed on this journey. When you combine that with the fact that this is the last leg of my trip and that we have now turned a New Year, well, it just feels a little different to be here.
2) My boyfriend, who is living and working in Australia and the reason that this country was tacked onto my trip. He is not only a workaholic, but he is content doing the same things over and over and over again. My exploratory side feels like it just came to a grinding halt in a sharp contrast to the previous weeks. At this point it is hard for me to tell the difference between suddenly acquiring a new and very different travel buddy after weeks of going solo and what very well may be...
3) an ill-fitted and failing relationship. While, I have yet to acquire the ability to tell the difference of such, I have no doubt that time will sort it out for me. Until then I'm learning how to be ok with all the arguing we are doing even when it is about the stupidest thing in the world.
Case in point: Celsius to Fahrenheit conversions.
Now before I get started, I should probably preface this section with a very simple portrait of myself and my man, so here goes: Me, Woman; Him, Man. Hopefully, that clears up any confusion.
Last night we went out to dinner with friends. One a born and bred Aussie, the other a long time American friend who had just arrived from NY. This dynamic inevitably led to the old Fahrenheit to Celsius conversion conversation as we discussed weather patterns and the mean temperature of the ocean (i.e., would it be comfortable to swim in the ocean?). Now, for those of you who have not had to make these conversions since high school or college, there are 2 main ways to go about it.
1) There is a rather clunky-in-the-field equation that goes like this: F = 32 + 9/5C. Basically, it involves a fraction and a rather ugly, although not difficult, fraction. The reason that fraction isn't so difficult is because 9 divided by 5 is 1.8, which is essentially 2 and 2 is a nice, round, whole number. Very easy to use whether you have a pen and paper handy and whether you like math or not. It also leads us to our second method.
2) Double the degrees Celsius and add 30.
Now before I ask which one you would use, let me just prove how similar these 2 equations are. Say it is 25C and you want to know what that translates to in degrees Fahrenheit.
Equation one tells us F = 32 + 9/5(25C) = 77F
Equation two tell us F = 2(25C) + 30 = 80F
Or, suppose it is 15C and, again, you want degrees F.
Equation one: F = 32 + 9/5(15C) = 59F
Equation two: F = 2(15C) + 30 = 60F
As you can clearly see, the answers are more or less the same - only being off by a couple of degrees. Now, if you were a chemist, or an engineer, or a computer programmer who was programming sensitive data, engineering something to spec or alchemizing a potent formula, I would recommend you use the first equation, but when you are trying to figure out if the ocean is swimmable in the middle of a dinner conversation and you want a quick and reliable method, use the second.
This is where he and I differ. Or, maybe this is where we are the same, I'm not sure, but let's tackle first things first, shall we? We differ because to me there really is no noticeable difference between 77F and 80F. I mean there just isn't any difference other then the look of the numbers. In reality, my body feels about 3 temperatures ranges, which we can call Hot, Comfortable and Cold. When you tell me it is 80F, it really only gives me a general idea that the weather is in the upper range of comfortable, but it actually depends on the conditions. It could be 80F with driving wind and rain or it could be 80F without a breeze in sight at 4 o'clock in the afternoon on asphalt that is reflecting back all the sun it has absorbed the entire day long. Regardless of the fact that the weather man says the temperature is 80F, those two things feel really, really different. For all intents and purposes, this is because temperature is an average, or an aggregate of it's surrounds. It is not exact and therefore I need not be exact, either.
Try telling that to a man who loves only numbers. Actually, I believe it is not so much numbers that he loves, but the number-ness that truly does him in. Numbers actually only represent other things, they aren't the things themselves, but what they represent is unchanging. 1 is always 1, every single time. 1 orange is the same amount as 1 pony and the same as 1 microbe, even though they are vastly different things, with different weights, proportions, uses and associations. One can represent many, many things, but it is only ever a single, solitary thing. Thus the reason, that my guy believes that 25C can only accurately amount to 77F, not my estimate of 80F.
As for where we are the same: Well, we each hold a very stubborn belief in our ideas and constantly seek people who attune to a similar fancy. Less and less that seems to be each other.
He says I try too hard. I say he doesn't try hard enough. He says relax, I say grow up. He says pedal harder, I say I'm pedaling as fast as I can. He says sex in the morning, I say sex as night. He's all elbows, I'm all knees and lately we've been asking each other why it is that we are together. We seamlessly connect on the answer: We have no idea but we're not ready to stop trying...and so it goes, two stubborn people trying to live their lives together on opposite side of the world and arguing almost every step along the way.
1) Fresh air. My respiratory system totally had it with motorbike exhaust, burning coconut husks and smoldering incense, so much so that I arrived in the land of Oz with a sore throat and a stuffy nose.
2) Clean water. Not only can I drink from the tap again and brush my teeth without bottled water, but I can actually open my mouth in the shower. It is the little things that make a big difference.
3) Pizza! Actually, any version of real Western food. After rice and noodles and noodles and rice and rice and rice and rice and noodles, I was ready for something else. As it turns out, my first meal in Australia was Laksa Noodle Soup. Go figure.
At the same time, there are several reasons why I'm not so certain about being here.
1) It's not a quite as foreign as the rest of the places I have traversed on this journey. When you combine that with the fact that this is the last leg of my trip and that we have now turned a New Year, well, it just feels a little different to be here.
2) My boyfriend, who is living and working in Australia and the reason that this country was tacked onto my trip. He is not only a workaholic, but he is content doing the same things over and over and over again. My exploratory side feels like it just came to a grinding halt in a sharp contrast to the previous weeks. At this point it is hard for me to tell the difference between suddenly acquiring a new and very different travel buddy after weeks of going solo and what very well may be...
3) an ill-fitted and failing relationship. While, I have yet to acquire the ability to tell the difference of such, I have no doubt that time will sort it out for me. Until then I'm learning how to be ok with all the arguing we are doing even when it is about the stupidest thing in the world.
Case in point: Celsius to Fahrenheit conversions.
Now before I get started, I should probably preface this section with a very simple portrait of myself and my man, so here goes: Me, Woman; Him, Man. Hopefully, that clears up any confusion.
Last night we went out to dinner with friends. One a born and bred Aussie, the other a long time American friend who had just arrived from NY. This dynamic inevitably led to the old Fahrenheit to Celsius conversion conversation as we discussed weather patterns and the mean temperature of the ocean (i.e., would it be comfortable to swim in the ocean?). Now, for those of you who have not had to make these conversions since high school or college, there are 2 main ways to go about it.
1) There is a rather clunky-in-the-field equation that goes like this: F = 32 + 9/5C. Basically, it involves a fraction and a rather ugly, although not difficult, fraction. The reason that fraction isn't so difficult is because 9 divided by 5 is 1.8, which is essentially 2 and 2 is a nice, round, whole number. Very easy to use whether you have a pen and paper handy and whether you like math or not. It also leads us to our second method.
2) Double the degrees Celsius and add 30.
Now before I ask which one you would use, let me just prove how similar these 2 equations are. Say it is 25C and you want to know what that translates to in degrees Fahrenheit.
Equation one tells us F = 32 + 9/5(25C) = 77F
Equation two tell us F = 2(25C) + 30 = 80F
Or, suppose it is 15C and, again, you want degrees F.
Equation one: F = 32 + 9/5(15C) = 59F
Equation two: F = 2(15C) + 30 = 60F
As you can clearly see, the answers are more or less the same - only being off by a couple of degrees. Now, if you were a chemist, or an engineer, or a computer programmer who was programming sensitive data, engineering something to spec or alchemizing a potent formula, I would recommend you use the first equation, but when you are trying to figure out if the ocean is swimmable in the middle of a dinner conversation and you want a quick and reliable method, use the second.
This is where he and I differ. Or, maybe this is where we are the same, I'm not sure, but let's tackle first things first, shall we? We differ because to me there really is no noticeable difference between 77F and 80F. I mean there just isn't any difference other then the look of the numbers. In reality, my body feels about 3 temperatures ranges, which we can call Hot, Comfortable and Cold. When you tell me it is 80F, it really only gives me a general idea that the weather is in the upper range of comfortable, but it actually depends on the conditions. It could be 80F with driving wind and rain or it could be 80F without a breeze in sight at 4 o'clock in the afternoon on asphalt that is reflecting back all the sun it has absorbed the entire day long. Regardless of the fact that the weather man says the temperature is 80F, those two things feel really, really different. For all intents and purposes, this is because temperature is an average, or an aggregate of it's surrounds. It is not exact and therefore I need not be exact, either.
Try telling that to a man who loves only numbers. Actually, I believe it is not so much numbers that he loves, but the number-ness that truly does him in. Numbers actually only represent other things, they aren't the things themselves, but what they represent is unchanging. 1 is always 1, every single time. 1 orange is the same amount as 1 pony and the same as 1 microbe, even though they are vastly different things, with different weights, proportions, uses and associations. One can represent many, many things, but it is only ever a single, solitary thing. Thus the reason, that my guy believes that 25C can only accurately amount to 77F, not my estimate of 80F.
As for where we are the same: Well, we each hold a very stubborn belief in our ideas and constantly seek people who attune to a similar fancy. Less and less that seems to be each other.
He says I try too hard. I say he doesn't try hard enough. He says relax, I say grow up. He says pedal harder, I say I'm pedaling as fast as I can. He says sex in the morning, I say sex as night. He's all elbows, I'm all knees and lately we've been asking each other why it is that we are together. We seamlessly connect on the answer: We have no idea but we're not ready to stop trying...and so it goes, two stubborn people trying to live their lives together on opposite side of the world and arguing almost every step along the way.
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