When Life Gives You Lemons
In Tao Te Ching, Lao-tzu makes statements that are beyond profound. Some that you may need to read a hundred times before it even begins to make sense. I finished it for the first time last night, so needless to say, I get to reread it many more times in the future. One line that stood out in my current situation was this:
“Knowing others is intelligence;
knowing yourself is wisdom.
Mastering others is strength;
mastering yourself is true power.
If you realize that you have enough,
you are truly rich.
If you stay in the center
and embrace death with your whole heart,
you will endure forever.”
When I decided to travel, I had a few goals. Work in a school teaching children English, experience new culture and new places, meet as many new people as possible. Simple expectations seemingly written in every travel blog, by every millennial, everywhere. Fine expectations. Worthy expectations. Choosing to travel with a checklist of expectations doesn’t seem like the proper way to achieve what you set out to achieve. Living life checking items off a list doesn’t seem like the way to live life. I don’t even go to the grocery store with a list, yet here I am attempting to script an entire journey to another country thousands of miles away from home.
I am not trying to say that setting goals and working to achieve those goals is a bad thing. Certainly, we have bills each month and in order to pay those bills, we need to work and in order to work we need to take care of our bodies blah, blah, blah. Goals and expectations are separated by your belief. You can believe in achieving a goal and be OK with not reaching it. You can set a goal with the intention of pushing yourself to grow even while knowing that the goal may be beyond achievement. When you set expectations, you are attracting disappointment. I expect to teach English in Cambodia. Simple statement. So what if I don’t? Have I failed? Perhaps I have succeeded in finding something that can make a greater impact. Perhaps I have found a way of living that brings greater joy to myself and those around me. Is this failure?
The point that I am getting to is that I have decided to free myself of expectations for this trip. I have goals, sure. My goals will be lofty and derived from a place of love and giving. My goals will push me to be a better man in every way that I can think of, but I will no longer be expecting anything from myself.
I spent a long time reflecting on what the HELL I am doing this morning. Why am I here? What brought me here? Why did I decide to up and leave my job, friends, family, everything of comfort in my life to move to a third world country without any guaranteed job, friends, life of any sort. What I came up with is that after thirty years of living on this Earth, I have no idea who I am. I think I did at one point and somewhere along the way it was lost. I became a body, skin and bones, but not truly a person. I did things that I felt would make others like me, rarely doing anything that would help me like myself. I did very little reflection and chose to numb any sense of that with drugs or alcohol. I disconnected from people that I cared about deeply and that cared about me because it was easier than explaining that I felt lost in my own skin.
So why did I come here? I came here to rediscover who I am. The little boy who never saw a tree that he wouldn’t climb. The little boy that I see smiling so big in every picture. To rediscover that happiness and zest for life that I know I had at one point, but have lost along the way. At this point, nothing could be more clear and each day that I wake up I believe that I am drawing one step closer to finding that little boy again.
So back to the title, “When Life Gives You Lemons.” Many people say make lemonade. Slug said paint that shit gold. I think when life gives you lemons, this is because you need a freaking lemon. Sometimes life gets too sweet and we need a bit of tartness to balance it out. Isn’t that what life is? A fine balance. So if life gives you lemons, peel it, eat it, brush your teeth after because from what I hear they cause massive damage to your enamel, and let it remind you what the sweetness was like. Just don’t squeeze it in your eye, that is extremely unpleasant.
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this, I know I didn’t get into any of the activities that I’ve been up to over the last few days, but I was feeling a bit introspective and this is what felt right to me. For those of you that are curious, I am currently in Bangkok, leased an apartment in Siem Reap that I will be returning to on the 20th, and at this current moment I could not be happier. I took a bite of the lemon and now I am about to go have some french toast, extra syrup.
With Love,
Gage B.
