true life planet

In planning my trip to Calcutta. one thing I’m really aware of is how different I feel about going there than I did when it was just an idea or a dream.

I can’t even believe how different I am now than I was a year ago.

A year ago I was nervous and scared and not all that self reliant.

Back at home, I had been an interesting person, a creative person, and perhaps an independent thinker, but I wasn’t anything like the way I am now.

I know myself better now. I know the world better now, too. I know about parts and peoples of the world that before I had only heard about.

I know how to make a canoe, hike up a mountain, butcher a large animal, give myself stitches, be still when I see a large snake. I know what it is like to see someone die, to see someone give birth, to see someone starve, to see someone get their first pair of shoes.

I’m now so much more self reliant and aware of the world that I look back at my old life in the USA and wonder who was that living that half-life?

Because that’s what it was–a half-life. I had had big dreams but I never really followed them.

In spite of being from the USA, where supposedly anything is possible for one’s life, where no dream is too big, where if one wants something they can usually work hard to achieve it–I never really felt that anything was possible for me. There were so many people telling me that I couldn’t do certain things (or the rules and way in which to do them if I tried), that it became second nature to me to accept limits instead of breaking boundaries.

I think one’s community of family, friends, and relationships play a big role in this, too. People mean well, but truthfully..they just want us to want what they want. Then it’s easier for everyone.Everyone means well, but in the end..it seems to me people often end up living a life that has very little to do with who they are.

This mindset mixed with certain cultural expectations of how things are supposed to be in one’s life left me–and my desires, dreams and goals –unreachable. There is a whole status quo, which has certain expectations one has to meet about pretty much everything in your life. The culture tells you how to live.

Culture tells everyone, all over the planet, what to do and when to do it-even how to do it.

One thing I’ve picked up on from travel is that cultural expectations differ from one group of people to the next. As I’ve visited each place, my own expectations of what is deemed culturally appropriate have changed, too.

It makes the expectations of my own culture suddenly seem extremely arbitrary and silly. I don’t care about meeting the status quo in my own country anymore, because it makes no sense to me.

Another big change is that I have become more of a leader. I’m tackling big projects, having bigger ideas, and deciding that yes, I can. So much different than the main question I was asking myself when I left, which was, “Can I?”.

About a year and half ago, I was talking to a close friend, and they told me that they were worried about me because “trying to do too much.” I was doing alot of different things at the time, and probably not all of them particularly well. Some of the things I was doing I wanted to do, and other things were just things I thought I should be doing.

A whole culture has been built up around the “doing too much” disease. There are books for “women who do to much” and retreats for “families who do too much”. It’s an industry!

I don’t think it is a question of doing too much, but more of a question of who gets to define what you do and how you are doing it.

Generally speaking, it isn’t you who gets to decide how your life goes. That’s because the cultural expectations are entirely set up towards two goals: money and fame. It’s all about who has the most toys in the end.

What a sad future for young people to look forward to. Have you noticed that young kids, when asked what job they want, are now choosing based on the salary, not on a dream? Not on any particular talent? Not on any particular principles, except the making of money? And who can blame them? They are just following the models they have around them–us.

Traveling to some of the places I have this past year has drastically changed my perception of what is necessary to have a life of value. I find myself more and more interested in living a life that has less impact on the planet, and less and less interested in making money and being self important. Simple living and service have become my new goals.

I’m not sure money making or fame were ever my goals in the past. But they certainly had something to do with the script I wrote out for myself of how my life was going to be and what would make me happy.

I’m redefining who I am through the experiences I have on this trip. ..and one thing I have changed is what my motivators are to have a happy life, a full life, a passionate life.

And this new script is being written by and for a very confident woman.

I think this newfound confidence and can-do attitude comes from having to make decisions-hundreds of them-every single day, about everything. Where to eat. What to eat. Where to sleep. Take a bus. Take a train. Walk. Kill a scorpion. Paddle a canoe…it’s endless.

Travel, especially traveling alone as a woman, is literally forcing me to be responsible for every single thing I do. There are no rules, which I can rely upon and lean on.

I’m making it all up as I go along.

Part of me is concerned about what it will be like to go home again.

I’ll be going home for about 5 weeks after India–before heading back down to Panama. I’ve already visited once, and that was…odd. I was only there for about a week and a half, and I had barely dealt with getting to have hot showers and going to the supermarket. I never had time to deal with the people in my life and how the changes I had been through would be received by them.

And back then, I thought I had changed alot! But now, even the woman I was back then I don’t really recognize. I’ve changed even more, and I would imagine after the next five months in India, I’ll be even more changed.

I think it is this aspect of going home that I find the most troublesome.

Maybe you’ve never noticed this, but people in our lives like us to pretty much stay the same. They generally don’t mind minor changes, as long as they get to stay the same and treat us as they always have. And..it’s not so much that I mind that people don’t want me to really change..it’s that I already have changed.

I feel vital… excited..passionate. I feel like I have, in front of me, a very clear path to walk on–for the first time in my life.

I’m setting up some very clear goals to achieve when I return home, all based around the wonderful decision to devote my life to service. It’s funny how when our lives become not about us anymore, that everything is is so suddenly simple. In fact, devoting my life to the service of people who need it most has so not only simplified my life, it’s taken out any obstacles that were in the way of me doing  anything I put my mind to.

This is a far cry from the woman I was when I left. I was always a people pleaser. And in a way, I still am. I mean, I want people to be content and happy…

But now, I’m more concerned about people and things that deserve my time and concern.

I was a pretty self centered person before I left on this trip–and frankly, so were most people I knew. People are convinced that their tiny concerns are important–when actually they aren’t at all. It took some serious hardships in the third world for me to understand that.

What does deserve my attention are those people and problems that I find myself suddenly passionate about. Things like human rights, hunger, sustainable agriculture..and more.

I find myself awake for the first time in my life…and I never want to live that half-life of my past again.

It’s been a painful journey, in some ways, to get to where I am today. But it’s been so worth it—I’ve had a very long year of self reflection and tests that pushed me to places I never thought I would go. I’ve been so sick I couldn’t stand up, forcing me to rely on strangers. I’ve been so overwhelmed at the sight of extreme poverty that I couldn’t sleep. I’ve eaten food that was..inedible..in my culture. I’ve been confronted, head on, about everything I believed about myself, humanity, good, bad, right, wrong… So many more challenges come to mind… and, I’m sure I have more challenges and opportunities for growth ahead..

There have so many times I wanted to go home. So many times I was lonely. So many times that I wanted the familiar. So many times that I thought I was going to go over the edge.

And when I finally did go over the edge, it turned out to not be scary at all…but liberating.

I will remind myself of this in the coming months!

gigi

gigi

It’s been a dream of mine–for some unexplained reason–to go and live in Calcutta, India and work with the Sisters of Charity with the homeless, poor, sick, and dying people of that city.

I never really could bring myself to do it, somehow. There was always life to be led, and that never really included running off to India for months at a time.

Finally, it’s going to happen.

I’m on a plane a week from today, heading to Calcutta for five months.

Going to Calcutta represents a shift in my life-and I haven’t even gotten there yet.

I think I didn’t make the effort to go before because I was incredibly superficial and I also was worried about what other people thought. (Funny how these two generally go together!)

Alot of people in my life were worried about disease, and that I would get something incurable. There’s alot of truth to this, because working with the Sisters, you are exposed to many diseases that you would have less likelihood of being exposed to in the Western world. Some examples are tuberculosis and  HIV/AIDS.

I don’t have alot of fear about getting sick. I think if I do, then I do. All I can do is try to prepare for it and try to be prepared so that the likelihood of that happening is a whole lot less.

Maybe this more casual attitude comes from having already been on the road for a year…..

During the past year, I’ve lived in places that were off the beaten path, where disease and illness were part of everyday life. I haven’t been immune to illness either–I’ve had malaria, dengue fever, dysentry, giardia, parasites, lice…

When I write out that list, it does kind of make me stop and smile to myself and think that perhaps I am totally insane.

But that’s paired with the fact that I really enjoy helping people who need the help most–and these people tend to live in terrible conditions. It’s just part of the package.

And I think that I am attracted to more extreme situations because they teach me more about myself and it’s an opportunity for growth–instant growth. When you’re in a jungle, and you have no clean drinking water and you’re down to your last jar of peanut butter, and you’re surrounded by little kids who are hungry, you gain more in compassion and humility than you can imagine. And while the risks you take in that moment become increasingly more and more irrelevant, you also become more and more wise, resourceful, and self reliant.

That said, it pays off to prepare and prevent as many things that have the potential to make me sick.

So, at the moment I’m hanging out at a friend’s house in France, reading up other’s experiences of volunteering and living in Calcutta. Most of the stuff I’ve found online have been glowing reports of the experience. But they’ve also increased the size of my med kit by 3x, and had me running around the nearby village trying to find everything from tea tree oil to rehydration mix to rubber gloves. Not easy in a tiny village in France!

While I’m in Calcutta, I won’t just be volunteering–Calcutta a center of intellectualism in India. There are more books written and read there than perhaps any other place in India. So, I plan on learning Bengali and participating in as many of the cultural experiences as my schedule and state of mind will allow.

And instead of writing out lots of individual entries based on notes, I’ve decided instead to write all of my journal entries down on the blog. This seems like the best way to look back at the end and see how I have grown from the experience, and it also keeps it much more raw and immediate for my readers.

Five months in Calcutta. I can’t believe this dream of mine is about to come true.

gigi