Today I am on a dive boat off Nha Trang, Vietnam. The snorkeling is beautiful, clear and warm enough to keep me there; lots of fish, coral, all shapes and sizes. Yet, while am under the sea gliding through the water my mind is still active. Occasionally I concentrate on the beauty below me, the wonder of the under water world. I am only there. Then there is the silence of my thoughts again. I am still putting together this year; experiences, conversations, memories, feelings, meditation of a kind. I am confronted with myself, my values, and my experiences. I am tired of my own thoughts, yet I cherish this time alone, time to reflect. It’s a peaceful experience below the surface.
Each day gives reason for challenge, a chance meeting, a conversation, a moment. My moment yesterday…..a “ high five” with a young girl holding a sickle coming back from the rice field walking along the side of the road as a whizzed past on my “easy rider” motor cycle….white silk scarf flowing behind me. We smiled and our fingers tingled for just a few moments. Contact! Beautiful! And then it was gone, that moment, yet it remains in me, my experience, a joyful moment. So many have I had this year.
Today…a conversation with the dive master, a handsome French/Canadian living his “second life’ in Asia after 12 years in the army…surviving on is pension and thrills of work on the boats and the social life where ever he goes. His story ….twelve months spent in a Cambodian prison! Corruption and Cambodian opportunism, from young girls and families taking the opportunity to extort the tourists. The victimization is passed around and around. There are young girls exploited by European men, brothels used and accepted by Cambodian men, set-ups, pay-offs, sex crimes, pedophilia, prostitution, extortion from judges and lawyers to parents and impoverished children. The cycle continues around and around.
How does this reflect on me? Where do I sit with it all? What am I learning? Do I dare have an opinion, a right to judge? I shrug. Is it acceptance of difference? I think that’s what it is: “God help me to change the things I can, and accept the things I can not.”
Is our society any better than theirs? No. Corruption, power, greed, the ego out of control, and aggression, lack of respect for one another our environment, absence of integrity, family break down, divorce, adultery, deception, it goes on and on…all part of my/our world. I see it. I experience it. I feel it’s degradation. What can I change? Only me and the choices I make about how I live my life. This is all I can do. Forever learning and growing. Living life with love not fear ruling my actions….compassion, and understanding not judgment. Being true to my own values, myself, and others. Living my life with integrity. This is what I can do and what I choose.
Deep sigh……This year is certainly challenging on lots of fronts, but reconfirming that I am on the right path for me. Ever expanding, never closed to not seeing, heart felt about all my experiences, sincere and respectful.
