During my time here, I’ve had several friends back home comment on how they wish they could take part in similar experiences like my own South East Asian adventures and have even asked if picking up and moving to a new country is as easy as it sounds, and if so, how they should go about doing it.
I’m not saying it was easy, but you know… It kind of was. I mean, the hardest part wasn’t choosing Cambodia (or having someone choose for me which is what I needed at the time)’ rather, it was actually putting an $800+ one-way plane ticket on my Chase Credit Card, because THAT meant I really was committing myself to something unknown, and we all know how much we like certainty.
A friend said to me a few months back, “You’ve built up a whole life here in a short time, and it has not gone unnoticed.” An odd choice of words I thought, wondering exactly who had noticed, but at the same time, not really caring. In retrospect, I guess I have built a whole new life around me. New gym memberships, new apartments, new bank accounts, new friends, new job(s), new language, and on and on and all for a period of time with a big question mark at the end.
I see now that only thing not new is me, myself, and I. I still occasionally diverge from work research onto Facebook, g-chat & The New York Times; I still draw horrible stick figures and stick-squirrels on letters and postcards I send home, and I still have to fight with my curls to stay in place. Other things about me have changed though—the experience of meeting and having friends, roommates, and acquaintances from six continents (I have yet to meet Antarctican penguins in Cambodia) means I am selfish, and take a little from them when we meet-- their perspectives on politics, economics, social issues, impunity, religion, education, relationships and just plain life. I don’t mean too, but maybe they do the same. And so it goes— the sharing and trading of ideas, of lifestyles, of knowing people that take risks and don’t take risks, of discovering how so many people can really truly be so utterly unselfish, true to themselves and open that they don’t mind shaking the hands of a prostitute after a drink at the bar with friends.
I think back home we suffer from ill judgment… Ill judgment of both others and more painfully, of ourselves. We judge those who don’t have the things we have or know the things that our college education has taught us, but we also judge ourselves for not taking a leap forward, for not doing the things we really want to do because it’s too expensive, or difficult.
I know when I go home for Christmas this winter, people will ask me what I have learned, as if some life-lesson must be drawn from every experience we witness while abroad. So here it goes...
What I’ve learned in my last 8 months in Cambodia is this (and I’m apologize for the cliché):
Life is way too short to not do the things we love, or at least try to discover what they might be. Life is way too short to get hung up on unsatisfying jobs, disappointing relationships, unexplored passions, and the ideas we put aside because they are too inconvenient to follow, risky or expensive. We use excuses all the time to justify not leaping forward. We can’t just sit and watch National Geographic (or whatever) forever. Or wait to strike millions to pay off college-debt.
Anyways, we don’t need a running start to make the jump… Just a plan, a little bit of cash saved up, and an idea or goal. The rest will come eventually (or so I keep telling myself). And if we don’t have a goal, a map of the world is a good start. As all of those bike hills, unemployed days, Asian stomach pains, and people that come and gone here have taught me, we’ll always hit ups and downs and even once in awhile really fall hard. We just have to get up, cleanse our wounds as best we can, maybe give the tuk-tuk driver around the corner a smile, and simply go on building & re-building.
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