I've spent a good deal of the last four months here in Sri Lanka thinking. This is not necessarily a new past time for me, but lately I suppose I’ve had the opportunity to do a lot more of it. I think during the many long, hot journeys to and from Colombo, I think while paddling my way out on my surf board and I think while watching the sun both rise and fall. I've thought about many useless, meaningless ideas, reminisced about recent memories from just a few months ago, to memories long since passed. I've thought about who I believe I am, about who my friends think I am and mostly I've thought about who I truly want to be. I've also surrendered many moments to the thought of being single and about what it will one day be like to be married. I've thought about how interesting, diverse, surprising and daring life can be.
You see, I recently received an email from a close friend, he's what you might call a life or career mentor. I had written to him just a few weeks ago during a time of doubt, when I was questioning my decision to move here, to leave my comfortable life behind and take the risk to go somewhere totally different. Now I’ve always been up for any kind of adventure, and traveling has always been something I’ve embraced. But I can now tell you from experience, that traveling for a couple weeks or even a couple of months is completely different from moving and creating a life in a foreign community. I was feeling alone, isolated and to be honest, disappointed, and when I say disappointed I mean, in myself. After all, I chose to come here. I chose to live in this situation and so why can’t I simply embrace this experience. It’s only for a year and it really is an amazing opportunity. But as the days come and go I still feel deflated. I suppose being in this foreign land, in a place where people live and work each day to simply earn enough money to eat, is a huge change. While I’ve witnessed poverty before, I suppose I’ve never lived it. My life here in Sri Lanka, is far from difficult. The natural surroundings are breathtaking, the people are charming and despite the constant stares and attention, my life goes on as normal. But still this feeling of deflation lives on.
And then, perhaps a week following my down-trodden email to him, Tod wrote back. He didn’t write much, but it was enough. He spoke to me about the concept of circumstance, and it started me thinking (yes here I go again) Blame it on the lack of night life, but it’s amazing how far the mind will go if you just let it. I started thinking that pretty much everything we think, feel or do can be related back to self perception. You see, most of the people here in Matara, in my village in Sri Lanka, were born here. They were born into a life of poverty, limitations, simplicity and war as I was born into an upper-class, western, Christian home. We were born into two completely different senses of reality. Their comprehension and understanding of what life is all about differs greatly from that of my own. Tod noted that the difficulties I was facing were self-imposed, and he was right.
I have mentioned in previous posts that the water situation has been a bit of an issue in our house. The reality being that we have a shower with slowly running cold water. In my perception we were missing both hot water and water pressure, making it a big inconvenience and quite unsanitary. Then take my many neighbours who only have a small garden tap with which to wash and drink. The thought of a real shower, with actual running water is a total luxury. So, as you can see, it’s simply a matter of perception. Sleeping under a mosquito net and conducting a thorough inspection of my bed every evening to ensure I am not sharing it with any unwanted visitors, such as scorpions, snakes or even the dengue invested mosquito, has been less than comforting. Again, to my neighbour next door, having a mosquito net and a bed for that matter is again a treasure in itself. Now these may seem like obvious examples, differences based on circumstance, but what about our daily lives. If we go back to my feelings of loneliness and doubt, of being here in this great foreign land, far from home, it is easy is to see the freedom that exists in this experience. Yes I am alone and single, and while I can look at this experience and wish to have companionship I can also choose to look at it with the beauty of being free. But note that this is not as easy as you might think.
A few days ago, we began host a large family of tiny ants all throughout our house. They arrived with the first rain and can be seen and felt everywhere. It's not that they bite or really do any harm- but they are undoubtedly annoying and they aren’t afraid to crawl over every square inch of your body. I mentioned this to my driver Camy the other day. He responded by saying" wow how lucky you are!" I quickly learnt, that here in Sri Lanka the presence of ants in ones home- is a sign of prosperity. It shows that there is something in the house worth staying for- notably food. And food here is indeed a luxury. So, I'm thinking that the popular saying of the "grass is greener on the other side" is really all a matter of perception. It seems to me, that each situation, each challenge in life is not measured by its own merit but rather by the way we choose to respond to it. I think this might be the most difficult lesson to learn. If we truly do learn it, we will have to stop complaining and worrying and suffering, because there will be good in everything. And that might be too much to handle.
So as I sit here in the sweltering heat accompanied by my recently enlarged stomach,no not from too many Lion Lagers, but from an insistent stomach parasite, a smile comes across my face. The old Amelia would be disgusted and deflated by the thought of some strange creature growing inside her, but now as I sit here with my newly adopted perspective I think, at least I'm providing both food and shelter for one of God's creatures, yeah right. Bring on the antibiotics, I gotta kill that sucker.
