SOUTHEAST ASIA
The Coffee House in Chiang Mai
If you are reading this, please find me
One day, as I’m walking idly in the streets of Chiang Mai, a coffee house catches my eye.
Its exterior is completely wood. There is a tiny pond right outside its door. You can sit around it and enjoy your coffee under the trees that cover the entire entrance.
I’m writing a message to my friend Barış. He is back home and asks me about my travels.
I am completely captivated by the coffee house. It almost feels like a moment of epiphany.
I want to write to him:
“How is it that the greatest wisdom in our lives is always the simplest things — so simple that you could easily explain to a child?”
I am thinking about the little girl I have met in northern Cambodia, who gave me the world’s most precious smile and allowed me to take a picture of her.
As a thank you, I gave her my bracelet, which was anyways much too childish for my age.
It is not a transaction, it’s the beautiful art of giving and taking from the heart.
Then I am thinking about the countless Buddha statues I have seen on my way to the coffee store.
Standing Buddha statues with the left palm hanging open beside the body, the right palm upright open near the chest.
I don’t know what it means but I’m thinking it must be about the art of giving and taking.
Then I find an article which explains the hand gestures I have described.
It’s called the Varada Mudra.
It suggests compassion and charity and symbolises the wish to devote oneself to human salvation.
I don’t believe in charity but I strongly believe in compassion. That’s what makes this world a wonderful place. The fact that a fraction of compassion exists somewhere.
I try to give a glimpse of these thoughts and feelings in my answer to Barış.
Probably though I rather end up sounding like Joey talking about giving and taking and receiving…
The streets near the coffee house are full of life. I enjoy my coffee slowly and contemplate the plants around me.
What if life was always like this?
What if we were busy thinking all day about the seemingly simple but truly deep things in life while observing nature’s beauty? Thinking about our own conduct with fellow humans and mother nature.
A sudden wind of sadness wraps me all around. For no reason.
Maybe it wants to warn me.
Next day I say “Sawadika” to my hosts at the guest house and set out on a tour to find that coffee house from the day before.
I move between the old city gates, pass by the beautiful Buddhist temples, greet the statues with a humble smile, walk past the tons of other cafes, restaurants, travel agencies, the souvenir shops…
It’s not there.
Wanting so badly to capture the feelings from the day before, I march around the entire city.
It’s not there.
My epiphany slowly perishes with the image of the coffee house fading away in my memory.
Did it have a sign? Was there really a pond? How lush were the plants outside? Maybe I’m remembering it all wrong?
I decide to stop chasing it though can’t help but look around the next few days as I again walk around the city with a new friend I made.
I still think of that coffee house today.
Who knows, maybe one day it finds me?
