Monthly Archives for December 2015

Cultural Immersion Lessons

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So far I’ve had two occurrences of scaring a child into crying just by being white.  That’s a new and notable experience in my world.

White tourists are still fairly novel outside of the few cities on the island of Flores (Indonesia).  Adults and children alike will quite happily yell “Bule!” (foreigner) at you as go past on the street and the younger generations seem to view you as a personal gift of English practice delivered from Heaven and will descend upon you en masse and wait upwards of 20 minutes at your elbow to gain your attention for long enough to practice even the tiniest amount of English they have. My friend and I being two young white foreign women, we quite often get to “enjoy” the experience of men approaching us, quickly exhausting their few phrases of English, then proceeding to just hover around and stare at us for annoyingly long periods of time before they finally give up and wander away.

While that all sounds rather charming when experienced one at a time, after being delayed on a busy market street in a rural town for three hours it quickly becomes extremely overwhelming because it. never. stops. and you realize your dearly held beliefs in common rules about personal physical and mental space don’t exist at all in this new land. (Seriously. The teenage girls in the schoolyard persisted in yelling at us from across the street and clapping their hands trying to engage our attention even though we were obviously involved in dealing with an issue. for. hours.)

Through those very long hours at the kiosk as my friend tried to solve her telephone problem, I had the joy of being entertained, and entertaining, a small herd of beautiful children with nothing more than silly hand games and faces and pictures. They spoke to me, even though I know next to no Indonesian and they didn’t know English, and I tried to figure out what they were saying and respond. It was a wonderful experience.

One of the great things I got from those few hours was how easily I could enjoy their company simply because they weren’t expecting anything from me, nor could I expect them, at their age, to be cognizant of whether they were being rude or disrespectful toward someone from a different culture. They were simply joyfully curious and happy to be engaged with, as was I.
It was a very gentle reminder to check myself on how I was being in the world and is still giving me a lot of good food for thought.

Thank heavens for the unassuming sweetness of children in the world to bring us back to the root of ourselves.

The Power of Myth and Fear

I’ve been meaning to read the Power of Myth for rather a long time, and finally, on the last day of November, as I spent long sleepless hours crossing the Pacific from San Francisco to Taipei to Indonesia, I listened through the audiobook of it. There’s a part near the end where Mr. Campbell is talking about one of the biggest messages he has learned from all of his studies of culture and myth and he summarizes it as “Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid!”. His words immediately struck a chord with me and I stopped the track, and pondered my reaction for a minute, and came to the conclusion that I strongly disagree with that. I would have to say Follow your bliss and don’t let the fear stop you!

There have been plenty of instances in the last several weeks leading up to my departure from America that I felt fear. Fear of the great unknown that I am so surely thrusting myself into for the next five (or more) months. Fear at having spent so long happily planning and preparing for such an exciting adventure to be beset by such doubts in the last few weeks. Am I making the wrong choice to leave for so long? Have I abused my friends’ kindness by asking and receiving so much help from them? What am I not prepared for? What if I run out of money before the end? What if I spend so much effort crossing the world and I don’t actually have any enlightening experiences and return home without any clearer idea of my place in the world and what I should be doing in it? And plenty more besides…

It is quite human, and quite common, to have fear. Fear of small everyday things. Fear of big all-encompassing life-affecting things. It is quite a hard and uncomfortable thing to recognize and be willing to admit to yourself that you have fear. Many, many people choose not. They go through life making choices and actions to avoid their fear, to keep it at arms-width, or further, even though, really, it never truly goes away. It will always be hanging over your shoulder, the great unacknowledged elephant in the room of your life.

There is nothing wrong in reacting that way, though I believe that in doing so you miss out on very valuable life-changing opportunities. Let yourself be afraid. Be with your fear and see what it is. The opportunity you have is that if you acknowledge it, and face it, and examine where it originates from, fear will show you where your challenges really are in life. It will show you the places inside yourself that need help and need your attention.

The real challenges are never truly the travel delays, the inclement weather, the cost of things, the loss of luggage or personal items, etc. There are plenty of inspiring stories from around the world that prove this. The real challenges are the ones triggered inside of you when there are obstacles in the way of where you want to go. How do you react to those obstacles? How do you let them affect your way forward?

If you let the obstacle, the fear, rule the situation, then you give over your power of choice to that obstacle, that fear, and you let it make the choices for you. There may be very difficult situations you find yourself in and the choices available to you may not be anything close to the choices you would prefer to have, but there always is a choice available.
Yes or no. To take action or not. To turn back or go forward.
There is always the power of choice available to you.

While it may seem easier to let someone or something else make the decision for you, to not face the scary thing, to not accept the responsibility for where you are going, how much are you missing out on by doing so? How wonderfully might things turn out if you didn’t let the fear stop you? How will you know?
If you don’t let yourself be afraid, if you ignore your fear and run away from facing it, you may never find out.

Mr. Campbell, I would like to add to your message. I would like to say: Let yourself be afraid. Follow your bliss and don’t let the fear stop you!