Inner change, outer change
This week, I left the monastery in Loei, Thailand to stay in Ho Chi Minh City. It has been a month of constantly being on the move. After 8 cities, 2 days of flight and countless of hours on car and bike rides, my body is crying for help. Nomadic life is nice to experience, but I’m ready to settle down and be anchored by a place.
Being a stranger in my own land has been fascinating, albeit sometimes difficult. As an aspiring anthropologist, I have been gathering a lot of interesting observations about Vietnam, a few key quotes and many enzymes for thoughts. Yet before that, let me share with you what’s going on with me at a deeper level, where the really interesting evolution is unfolding. I’m following the hunch that Deep Data, the rich, multi and trans-contextual information, is becoming more relatively more important in this time of Big Data deluge. .
Remember I wrote before about the moment of presencing after the saga of not getting a Colombian visa? I had an unmistakable vision of a unlikely group of people whom I would help weave together — a thriving community of change agents.
It is happening fast. Coming to the monastery last week, I met with Philip, an French American architect who has a strong tie with Vietnam. Philip was told by a Buddhist master that in one past life he had done some bad karma with Vietnam such that now he has to be around here. We connected very well on many levels, from spirituality to vision for a world filled with generosity to reflections on Vietnam as strangers and bridge-builders. Then he introduced me to the temple-resort near Saigon whose owner is to co-creating an intentional and inter-generational community and ecosystem of holistic living.
Coming to Saigon, I also met with Minh & Daniel, a young couple whom I found online through the ULab network for social change agents. The conversation went deep quickly, “deep” in the sense that we could talk about our hunches and seemingly miraculous events happening to us that we don’t usually share, for nobody understands nor believes.
I was then immediately invited to a few opportunities that align well with my vision, abilities and deep longing, where I am responsible for leading a new life coaching program. The challenge for me, as told many times by several people, is not finding something to do. For example, Daniel just did me a Tarot reading and said that I had too many things to give but not sure which one, and I would have to focus in order to make a real contribution.
The advice at this stage of the transformation process, after the presencing moment and crystallization of vision, is to act quickly and listen to all levels of feedback, from doing the work to what similar peers are doing to what the highest vision calls me to do.
It’s strange and exciting to be back in Vietnam after 9 years. I must be careful to re-integrate myself into the ever-changing Vietnamese culture while bringing forth a seed of change. Too much change would risk unnecessary and even unwelcomed disruption. Too much re-assimilation would mean not contributing enough of a difference.
My most important contribution for now will not be intellectual or physical but cultural. It’s a bold statement to make, one that anyone who cares about finding his own unique place in the world needs to articulate and continually do so.
Its manifestation will have many dimensions, but its core is social and cultural. It may culminate in the co-creation of something tangible and new: a building, a program or an organization. Yet, for such form to be long-lasting, it has to start with changing our deep assumptions and the way we perceive and relate to the world.
An example: a touchy fantasy
This week, Vietnamese was thrilled by its soccer team which got into the final round of Asia U23 league. Follow the craze was a scandal by the budget airline Vietjetair for having bikini-clad girls welcoming these young soccer players on their airplane home. It made me wonder about this touchy subject of touch in my own home.
The Vietnamese culture puts a huge emphasis on compassionate, kindred love, from familial to village buddies to fellow Vietnamese. Every child in Vietnam learns the idiom “Good leaves wrap the worn-out leaves”. We take it figuratively, but not literally enough. Poor and unfortunate people don’t get touched enough. Heck, even rich and fortunate and people don’t. While I don’t advocate for the level of radical openness like the 1960s American Summer of Love, compared to many other cultures, the Vietnamese exploration of touch, sensuality and sexuality is rather limited. Years of strict Confucian disciplines and Buddhist abstinence seems to generate lots of frustration.
One can tell how sexually repressed a culture is by looking at how many national romance novels there are at a normal bookstore. The more popular, the more repressed, for romantic novel is a way to sublime libido (kudos to Freud for his interesting and probably 98% incorrect idea)
How do we resolve this tension between a culture of sexual apprehension and the rapid, sometimes mindless, adoption of Westernized beauty standards? Or, to reframe the question, how might we blend the value of inner sensitivity with an outer expressiveness?
I don’t have an answer, although I adopt curiosity as an attitude to move forward. I like big chests and breasts too, but in my somewhat limited encounters, curiosity, followed by chemistry and sensitivity trump everything…
The phrase “yellow fever” reminds me that there is a reason many Westerners, mostly male, fetishizes Asians. I maybe risking being blasphemous here, but trying to live up to such fetishization isn’t a bad idea at all. When you are able to retain a strong sense of self, adapting to people’s expectation is how you develop. The key is to do both. Too much of the former, you get stunted and stuck in your own shell. Too much of the latter and you slowly lose your own uniqueness and start to resent the high-expecting world.
What is a possible answer to my own question then? Perhaps it’s a cultural shift to perceive touch as an extension of the deep care and connection that the Vietnamese already have in abundance. That will be a potent line of inquiry for another day soon. For now, I’ve got to bundle up and cuddle with my wise young cousin.
