How I Stopped Being A Hater

Sadhana Yoga building, Pokhara Nepal

Sadhana was the kind of 10-day yoga retreat that asks guests to BYOTP. It cost less per night than a restaurant filet.

Unapologetically rustic and wedged up on the mountainside, what the concrete U-shaped building lacked in charm, it made up for in warm hospitality. The guru, Asanga, was a silent, intense, 100 lb Nepali man who was so focused and dedicated that he--at the direction of his guru-- drank his own urine for 6 months. (While others were completely mortified by this, I took it as a sign that I was in good hands. No more suburban housewives clad in lululemon chanting OM and pretending to care about their "spiritual journey". This guy was legit. He drank his own pee for half a year in order to learn something--I respect that).

If any of you have seen the movie The Best Exotic Hotel Marigold, arriving at Sadhana was a similar experience. It did not take long to realize that the place was a far cry from the advertisements. The heavily advertised “mud bath” turned out to be a bowl of dirt on the roof next to a mud-crusted hose, and the hot showers were limp icy trickles. My bed came with a couple of free ten-legged mutant crawlies beneath the pillow, and the shared rooms/bathrooms were never cleaned during our 10 days. The "colon cleanse" we paid for was nothing more than a giant vat of hot salt water that we had to chug while doing jumping jacks until we got sick and had to run (literally) to the toilet.

Despite all this, I loved the place. It was as far away from reality as you could hope to be. The neighbors were mostly farmers, and our daily silent meditation was peppered by the singsong flirtation of birds. Plus the food was amazeballs-- authentic Nepali dishes beautifully prepared by a sweet woman named Devi whose unemployed husband liked to hang upside down form the ceiling beams and tease her while she cooked.

Panoramic view from the Sadhana porch, compliments of my friend Julie!

Though the daily schedule is besides the point of this article, I thought it might be interesting to some:

5:30am                                   wake-up

5:45-7:00am                           group meditation

7:00-7:30am                           black tea and limes (which they call lemons)

7:30-8:00am                           nasal cleansing (i.e. used netti pot in the garden…I hope plants like snot)

8:00-8:30am                           reflexology (spiky wooden cylinder you step on)

8:30-10:00am                         yoga

10:00-10:30am                       morning hike

10:30am                                breakfast (FINALLY!!!)

11:30-12:00pm                      steam bath/mud bath (your choice; mud bath is weather-pending)

12:00-1:00pm                        group meditation

1:00pm                                  lunch (dal bhat, dal bhat, dal bhat)

2:00-3:30pm                          free time (code for “yoga practice time” if you want to pass)

3:30-4:00pm                          karma yoga (white slave labor)

4:00-4:30pm                          masala tea and popcorn (<3 p="">

4:30-5:30pm                          chanting (that’s right—shouting in Sanskrit w/ closed eyes)

5:30-7:00pm                          yoga

7:00pm                                 dinner

8:00pm                                  candlelight meditation (group staring at a candle trying not to blink)

8:30pm                                  lights out

Asanga, our guru

Now that the scene is set (you're probably absent-mindedly slapping mosquitoes from your arms--it’s like you’re THERE), let me tell you why these ten days matter to me at all. Sadhana Yoga Retreat is where I met someone who changed the way I saw humanity. Let’s call him "Langer".

My first impression of 18 year old Langer from Alaska was ugly proof that I am a hater. One of those teaching points where you pause afterwards and think well played Life, well played.

After a grueling 30 minute hike up precarious mountain steps, I checked-in sweaty (as usual) and out of breath. There was a scrawny bobble-headed boy in the lobby (Langer), awkwardly hunched over the front desk with his long neck like a wilted stem holding up a heavy flower/cranium. His white wrists were all bone in their too-big sports watch, and his skin had the pale luminescence of babies – so fair that it was translucent, like wax paper covering a road map of veins.

Sadhana DIY mud baths... 

It was clear (har har!) he had been one of those kids whose mother had lathered him in SPF 20,000 before letting him walk to the mailbox or sit by the window after 8am. His balloon lips were blustering in a clumsy mumble as he tried to explain (in a nasal Fran Drescher voice) that he had “diii-et-terry restrictions… soooo no sugar, no fruit, no meat, no daaiiii-ry.” The Nepali staff guy looked back up at him blankly, not even knowing what to ask. Langer sighed and clarified, “that means no rice, no grains, no milk, no carrots, no tomatoes…” And as he continued to list out every food except spinach, he solidified my suspicion that he was indeed a sheltered. little. mama’s boy.

You can imagine my dismay when the next morning Langer and I were the only ones left at the breakfast table (half my museli with curd and half his specially prepared plain boiled egg with sliced cucumbers—no salt). The curse of the slow eaters. Forever forced into these awkward mismatched table situations. 

We started out the usual polite way (hometown - age - favorite post-coital jam...). Then I asked him what led him to travel to Nepal alone at such a young age. His answer completely humbled me.

Langer grew up in a small town in Alaska not too far from Anchorage with his parents and older brother. For as long as he could remember, his mother was always a “deeply spiritual woman” (I mentally rolled my eyes at this; I knew these people: dream catcher over the bed, prayer beads draped over the mirror, and hemp milk in the fridge). Langer explained he was always very close with his mother. Looking back, she might have been my best friend.

However, when Langer turned 16, after two years of devastating struggle, his mother died. Cancer.

The view alone makes you a believer...

At this point in his story, I put my spoon down and lifted my eyes to meet his, which were squinting through a jagged slice of sunlight that had polished his face smooth and white as moonstone. “Wow… I’m sorry,” I said. 

He side-smiled shyly (the kind of smile that's not a smile at all, but rather a response to palpable discomfort) and met my eyes as he whispered “it’s ok” and then looked back down at his cucumber slices as though that brief moment of hyper-intimacy was all he could handle. It was all just too much to get out and look in the eye.

After Langer's mother died, his father “kind of freaked out” and fled the house with the excuse that if he stayed he would most likely kill himself. Langer’s older brother (who I believe was 18 at the time) took off with his college money to go traveling.

Netti potting in the flower garden

So 16 year old Langer lived alone in the deserted and increasingly filthy house for the last two years of high school, taking a second job working construction (to which I almost called him a liar about since he looked like he’d never lifted anything heavier than the spoon he was self-consciously cradling) to pay the grocery bills. In addition to being a typical teenager and having to come to terms with the loss of his mother, he explained that this part of his life was challenging because he was constantly asked to deal with all kinds of other random “adult” absurdities, such as the time a tree fell on his house and poked a hole through their roof, or the time an army of ants staged a coup d’etat on the kitchen cabinets.

Despite all this, Langer kept his grades up. Two years later, upon graduating he was planning to go to college in Hawaii and study geneology and botany (typical pale-kid interests) since he had always passionately loved science. But life had another idea. His brother returned from his solo pilgrimages around the world and gave Langer something that his mother had left for him but asked that he not receive until he was 18: her diary when she was pregnant. 

Best. Cook. Ever. I tried to offer Devi a US visa...

Langer read each page as though it were a sacred message from the beyond—his last connection to his beloved mother. But the small tattered pages contained an ugly reality.

With cringing honesty, Langer's mother confessed (to no one at the time) that she had not wanted him. When she learned of her pregnancy she had gone to a homeopathic doctor and taken herbs to abort him. Langer read on with horror at his mother’s continuous adamant reassertion, entry after entry, that she felt trapped by this "new development" in her uterus--horribly claustrophobic. However, against all odds (or maybe this is a lesson that you can’t use herbs to abort babies), he survived. 

Yet what should have been a slightly jarring and emotionally damaging discovery was quickly turned on it's head.  As he began to plump inside her, she could feel his presence in a way that she had not experienced with her other children, like a great and intoxicating energy. She grew certain that he was meant to be on this earth—that he had fought for life because he was somehow essential to the future--that he was going to do something exceptional for humanity. 

From that point on, she gave into loving him intensely. Throughout the diary were sporadic allusions to her spiritual beliefs and how they ruled her life. Langer was desperate to know more--to understand this entirely private and yet hugely instrumental part of who his mother was. Finally, as though she were sending Langer clues from the beyond, she had scrawled on the inside back cover in soft black ink the words “cosmic consciousness”.

Sadhana Breakfast Nook - full house

Langer devoted all his energies to decoding these two words as though they held the key to who his mother really was—the key to unlocking life itself. He felt he was finally seeing her as a whole person and not just a parent.

What he found was surprisingly scientific. Throughout time there have been a number of people who claim to have tapped into some elevated sense of being via the same experience or "symptoms"— though this has taken many names: enlightenment in Buddhism, unlocking the kundalini in Hinduism, gnosis in early Christianity, the Ching spirit in Taoism, Osiris in ancient Egypt, and various names in many Native American tribes (most notably the Hopis). In fact, this concept has been written about and studied for thousands of years, and is described in depth by the Greek philosopher Plato in his Timaeus.  

Yoga in the organic vegetable garden

Despite the names being different, each person describes the exact same physical phenomena – a slight tingling that begins at the base of the tailbone and then works up the spine and culminates in the brain, where it is usually accompanied by a vision of bright light and feelings of unparalleled bliss and peacefulness, and the ability to comprehend the concept of infinite and interconnected matter. Basically, it feels just like walking out into the sunlight after getting a brazilian wax, hammered.

In 1872, a prominent Canadian scientist named Richard Bucke (who looked like a cross between Dumbledore and Leonardo Da Vinci) dabbled in meditation for many years until he had this same experience and grew consumed with the desire to explain it scientifically. He traveled all over the world interviewing people from the farthest corners of the earth who had practiced any form of meditation to see what the commonalities were. Bucke was astounded to find that the experiences were the same!

From his studies, he began to form the hypothesis that there are three states of consciousness: simple consciousness (animals), self consciousness (humans), and cosmic consciousness (enlightened).

Y SO OLD RICHARD BUCKE?

Modern science conclusively proves that as humans we currently use less than 10% of our brains. Bucke theorized that cosmic consciousness was a product of using a higher percentage of our brains' capabilities (hypothetically, more of the right brain) to advance as a species. He asserted that this “cosmic consciousness” that some spiritual forerunners had achieved is in fact the next step in our evolutionary chain. Cosmic consciousness is the ability to look past the boundaries or limitations of the “self” perspective and tap into a universal energy that runs through all living things. It would mean the end of war, the era of uber-compassion. 

Unblinking, I watched in complete shock and rapture with curd dripping down the corners of my half-open mouth as Langer's pale-lashed eyes swelled with shiny pre-tear fullness as he explained that at this point he had read enough: he put the breaks on his college plans and took that money to go on a spiritual quest across the world in search of some understanding of his mother and of this crazy, stupid, mind-blowing idea (by the way—his house—totally unoccupied if you’re looking for a place to crash in rural Alaska). So here he is--18 years old and financially, emotionally, and literally alone in the world fueled by a single concept: existence. 

mo' yoga

What I loved most was the way he explained all these theories to me—how he still has the skeptical and painstakingly thorough mental process of a true scientist—arguably his greatest strength as he looks to uncover the truth about all this in order to ultimately feel closer to a beautiful woman that he realized he only half knew. 

Just then the steam/mud-bath bell rang and Langer blinked and shifted up in his seat, as if re-joining the present moment. He had never told anyone that before. It wasn’t a secret, he explained, it was just too hard. 

I had no real words for him, just a smile and some eye-kindness. I rose, touched him lightly on his frail shoulder, back-handed the remaining muesli from my mouth, and left to go simmer alone with this new information.

My testimonial in the guest book!

As I walked off, overwhelmed, impressed, and mentally brought to my knees, I couldn't help but stew in my own shame. Why do I snap-judge?

Why is it that for all the times we are proven wrong, we continue to think that we know anything about the person we met at a bar, at the office Christmas party, in line at Walmart, or a few times at the edge of our pillow? We know nothing.

Even more troubling, Langer's story made me wonder how well we really understand the people we love—the ones who raised us, the ones we raised. The ones we share a roof and a bank account with.

And why is it that it is sometimes easier to trade secrets with the stranger sitting across the breakfast table in Asia than with those whose physical lives we inhabit everyday? Should we wait for the heart-wrenching perspective that accompanies death to see what beautiful souls our own home harbours? How long will we take to work up the courage to bare that part of ourselves –that beautiful vulnerability that we keep caged like a colorful bird in our hearts?

This Article Read My Mind

TGIF READERS! I normally don't like to put links in my blog because it feels like cheating (and laziness and plagiarism), but in this instance I feel I have no choice (shout-out to Chip for sending this link along).

This 2010 Raptitude.com article, "Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed" says exactly what I have been struggling in my head to conclude, formulate, and articulate for the past 6 months about the paradigm through which we view (and by extension-- live) our lives. It's one of those reads that changes how we see the world and the art of living. There is nothing else I have left to say except ditto to everything he says (don't you just hate that word?) and enjoy!

http://www.raptitude.com/2010/07/your-lifestyle-has-already-been-designed/ 

Great Example of some free fun: Kuangse falls in Laos

Monkey Business

Monkey Temple

Today was one of those sneak-attack days that started like every other but ended up kicking the shit out of me.

As usual, I woke up well before my alarm to the defiant cock-a-doodle-doo of insensitive roosters (who I swear are in cahoots with Matt to carry out his life-long work of pissing me off first thing in the morning). Instead of rising, I remained cup-like under stiff musty blankets, awaiting my shrill alarm.

When it finally screeched, Ba (Nepali for “dad”) knocked gently on my bedroom door as he does every morning, giving a slight bow as he passed me a cup of black tea (with 600 tablespoons of sugar). Groggily, I smiled, knuckled the sleep from my eyes, thanked him, and began my daily ritual of forcing down the hot glucose in undiscerning gulps as I hopped clumsily around the cold stone room pulling on my baggy floor length skirt and equally shapeless, unsexy, top.

Laundry

Upon emerging, I brushed my teeth and washed my face with a cup of cold grayish water from the large plastic barrel in the kitchen (we haven’t had running water in ages), and left for work at around 9:30am. Nepalis generally work very approximate hours bookended by daal bhat meals; if I had to assign actual times, I would estimate most people saunter in and out of offices around 10:00am - 4:00pm (six days a week). Though in the winter, the daily 10-16 hour power cuts further compress the workday (and the Nepali government wonders why multinationals aren’t banging down their doors?)

The fat white sun frayed onto our winding dirt road, eclipsed on both sides by labyrinths of cramped three-story three-family Newari homes. Lines of laundered saris linked small shuttered windows. Faded, forgotten offerings of dried-up marigold garlands slung themselves sloppily over wooden doorways and black iron gates embossed with bronze/gold swastikas (an ancient symbol of well-being or good luck).

Marigold garlands

As I walked, high-stepping chickens scavenged  the perimeter and the black-glass eyes of matted street dogs glanced up from heavy lids to follow me without bothering to lift their heads. A halo of flies hummed busily overhead. Bare-bottomed nut-brown babies with dark downy hair (all eschew) waddled drunkenly into their mothers’ calves. Glossy crows leered from the rooftops as I turned onto the main road to wait for the bus (by bus I mean white unmarked rapist van with Nepali passenger holding a wad of rupees and rapidly shouting out landmarks). As usual, it was packed tighter than Aaliyah's last flight.

Sari laundry

As I stood hunched with my rear stuck out, half-crouching (half playing that lovely dropped-soap prison game with the guy behind me), I stared out the window with a mix of exhaustion, boredom, and perpetual fascination. It was time for my daily worry session. Here's a sample of my mind's potpourri: there was a huge infrastructure issue at work and I wondered fleetingly and frustratedly how to "think outside the box". Could I sell my body to a customs official, or maybe even the Minister of Finance himself? Would CNN somehow get wind of it? My family and native society shun me like a second-string Lewinsky? What picture would they use for my headline? My facebook default? Should I change it first? Of course not--this is silly. Even if extorted with just cuddling a customs official, I think I'd prefer to continue with my streak of failure. Does that mean I'm not invested?

Next I wondered about my Aama (Nepali Mom), who had just been hospitalized for 2 weeks after an emergency gallbladder operation--would she be able to leave the house in time for next week's Lalitpur festival? Did she even give a shit about the festival, or was I being selfish? How was she still smiling after all that continual unrelenting drug-less pain? She should be screaming/ throwing herself into a hot vat of daal. Do I have that kind of grit? Am I a pussy? Are all Westerners pussies compared to Nepalis? It is not the first time I've wondered this. Interesting. Maybe there's a Western pain killer I could smuggle her. Is it arrogant to wonder that? Would she take it, or would she spat disdainfully at my cushy American decadence? I can't picture her ever being disdainful--let me try. What is it with Nepalis and spatting?

Our house gate

But most of my ride that day, like most days, was spent worried about Siema (my Nepali younger sister) who had just started on heavy-duty anti-depressants after an emotionally turbulent few weeks of red-rimmed eyes and sincere, flambuoyant, hysteria. It was upsetting watching her physically dwindle over the past few weeks, cloaked in oppressive sadness. How was she today? What if we eliminated the white rice from her diet--stabilized her blood suger--would that help? Is that idiotic? Why must I always meddle?

And lastly, as I caught sight of a Nepali woman at the front of the bus lovingly squeeze her daughter's chin, with a small poignant pang I reflected that it had been far too long since I’d sat down with someone who spoke native English. Someone who hugged.

I believe I underestimated the importance of this last bit. The sorrow was a surreptitious one. When people back home asked over rushed catch-up emails if I ever got lonely surrounded by Nepalis all the time, I responded with a cavalier “psssh—no way, I’m in Nepal!” Yet after the first few novelty months passed, I began to feel a small sneaking heaviness take root. It was as though there were an empty room at the back of my chest that someone snuck a hose into and was gradually, continuously filling with icy water—patiently waiting for an overflow. There was nothing loud, dramatic, or urgent about it; it was just something I learned to carry. Holiday weight.

But this was nothing new (or even noticeable), and everything went on as usual today until I left work and began my daily journey home via the bus stop. I was walking along my familiar high-traffic route past meat shops boasting decapitated pig heads and goats’ feet (hooves and all) swathed in hot-red blood, and tea stalls emanating the sweet scent of creamy masala, when I tripped over a jagged torn-up section of sidewalk (one of many).

Butcher's proud sidewalk display 

I saw the fall happening, slow as George Bush. I could see my flip-flop locked on the chunk of cement, and I could feel myself gradually moving forward at an angle, but all I did was allow it. I hit the ground diagonally with a hard skid—pens and notes scattered from my flung bag, my skirt bellowed out like a parachute and settled dramatically around me (luckily covering everything), and at long last my plummeting left jaw joined my still, splayed, limbs on the dusty cracked concrete.

Everything stopped. Everything quieted. A few seconds of dazed confusion passed (or was it hours?) before a man ran to help me up. With shy fingertips I clutched his coat sleeves as I tried out standing as if I were a toddler discovering her legs. After a bit of wobbling I had the hang of it and he left me to balance while he began picking up my belongings, which people were indifferently stepping over (my money is always on body so the rest is of no interest I suppose).

Street leading to my office

This gave me time to examine my wounds: two large bloody circles of raw hamburger meat stood where my knees had once been, so swollen it was as though my legs had sprouted hills. My left arm took the brunt of it; blood began to bloom out of the scrapes as if from nowhere, ousting itself in large patches and sliding down my bicep (or lack thereof) in meandering rosy trickles; voluptuous droplets collected on my elbow and swayed before falling off.

The city’s volume returned the same time as my thoughts. It was like someone had replaced a pulled speaker-cord. A cacophony of car horns haaaaanked in exasperation and motorbikes vroomed in and out like flies. I had no first aid on me and not enough money for a cab. I was acting like a robot programmed to return home (Eeeeeeeee Teeeeeeee phooooone hooooome). My thoughts were simple, direct, and in the imperative: make steps,  get to corner, board bus, walk, bedroom, must (MUST) clean. I knew my calm focus would start to unravel if I let myself picture all the bacteria and filth that had just been mashed into my vital streams.

The neighborhood corner store

I nodded a breathy, stunned thanks to the man, slung my bag across my good shoulder, and with both hands holding my floor-length skirt out in front of me at the knees so they wouldn’t stick into the wounds, I began to limp ahead (I suspect I looked and was walking not unlike Chuckie’s bride). If only I had been in a country where showing one’s knees was not slutty!

Eventually (very awkwardly), I made it to the bus stop and managed to squeeze and grope my way into a single seat on the right-hand side of the van about halfway back, where I sat with my hands gently holding my skirt out away from my bloody knees and (now) calves.

As the bus drove on,  I re-entered my usual mental diatribe, adding a little section about my injuries, when the bus stopped again and a silver-haired Nepali woman wearing a grasshopper-green sari and covered in a pantyhose-layer of filth sat squat-dab on my lap (not uncommon on Nepali buses, but usually impolite to do without a confirmatory nod/smile).

My charming microbus commute

I winced loudly from the pain of my raw knees being panini-pressed, but she did not seem to notice or care. We still had over 30 minutes before my stop and just as I feared, I was starting to lose my shit: how can people just step right over me/my things? Sit on me? Watch me get sat on? Spit so much? Not bathe or show their knees or celebrate Easter or use utensils? Or hug? What is wrong with this place?!?

The bus was trapped in a standstill traffic jam. I looked over my right shoulder to check the van for blood when out the window I could hardly believe my eyes! (I've always wanted to say that, and in this case it was true). Across the street I saw a giant ape-sized monkey (I’m no monkey expert) trying to balance on top of a messy mix of about 20 different telephone wires way up in the colorless pre-dusk sky. I had seen monkeys clamber up telephone poles and walk the wires before, but never had I seen one this large—he was as big as Justin Beiber! Even now as I recall him, I’m not sure who would have won in a fight, him or Kim Jong-un.

As I looked on, he (definintely he, with bragging rights) was beginning to garner some attention from the crowded streets below because of his sheer size and because of how clumsy and uncertain he seemed. He was about 25 feet high now, standing with both feet on the tangle of black wire, one hand on a shaky parallel wire and one arm still nervously curled around the pole behind him. He looked positively human. A man in an orange-brown fur coat.

I always assumed animals just instinctively knew what they were doing when climbing. They’re born surefooted; it’s their nature. 

I watched with mounting interest as he took one tentative step forward onto the sloping wobbly wires and tried to trust in their presence as he let go of the pole. But it was all wrong. None of the wires were predictable, they were splayed in different directions and too lax to hold him. He bobbed slightly, for what seemed like an eternity. Then his arms went up and out in an attempt to restore balance, just as most humans do in my yoga class when they are about to fall out of tree pose, and he stood flailing on the wires, wavering like water, before plummeting --yes, he was actually plummeting!-- as if in slow-motion, back-first onto the pavement.

(My monkey was bigger. #thatswhathesaid)

Everyone halted (for real this time, not like my fall). As he lay there, a giant hairy statue, the jam cleared and the bus rolled forward like nothing had happened. And in a way, nothing had. I twisted my neck back far as it would go, wringing it like a towel to get some kind of last-minute closure. I glimpsed a blur of colorfully-robed people converging in on a motionless orange-brown lump.

And just like that the world both broke me and fixed me. That's right, I cried. First shyly and then unapologetically. Right there on the bus beneath a dirty old lady, I cried like a child. Plump loose tears slid eagerly out both corners of my eyes like they were fleeing someplace awful.

At first I wept for the monkey—so senseless! The terror and pain he must have felt, the confusion, the uncertain death. But once I started, I realized my list was much longer. Personal. Someone had hooked a vacuum into that icy inner water-room of mine and was pumping out all the sorrow. I wept for the monkey’s family (Did he have babies? A hot monkey wife?). I wept for all the animals who suffer untimely deaths from urban jungles. I wept for my probably-infected knees, for Ama, for Siema, for the women I help who were born into utter squalor, for my deep and unquenchable loneliness, for the repulsive goddman sugary tea I have to swallow every morning, for the countless devastatingly poor, deformed, degraded people I see every fucking day and cannot save. That no one can save. I cried for failing and I cried for crying. 

I cried silently the whole way as people shifted uncomfortably and looked on in thinly-masked fascination. A white girl riding the bus is already interesting, but a white girl crying on the bus is like a fucking unicorn. I could already hear the way they’d recount it for their families over evening daal bhat, the children pausing with wide unbelieving eyes and necks craned in enthrallment as they imagined the sight of a squashed bloody weeping blonde riding alone amongst their people.

Holy Bagmati River,  cremation ghats (right)

And at this thought I laughed. I laughed because of how devastating and at the same time, utterly ridiculous, the whole thing was—I was making a public spectacle of myself over a dead monkey I did not know and a scraped knee. I’m twenty five years old for chrissakes! Get it together!

So there I sat, laughing and crying until I was mostly just laughing. And I was so relieved that I could see the absurd again. The laughter was fantastically freeing. It unburdened me. I felt deliriously light and buoyant and unafraid. Drunk and slap-happy. 

But here's my point. I don’t know what happened to that monkey (though even now it is upsetting to ponder), but that big dumb beast managed to teach me--a supposedly evolved version of him--two important things from it all; first, that it wasn’t his fault. Monkeys were never meant to climb wires. It was the world that fucked up, that owes him, that has to answer for to the price of a life. But so what? It doesn’t matter that it wasn’t his fault. Not one bit. You can blame the world for your failures and, like the monkey, you can be well-founded--horribly, unjustly wronged--but it does not change anything. It doesn’t erase the city, and it doesn’t make you nimble on wires.

Nothing makes you feel smaller than the Himalayas

The world might want to, but ultimately, it cannot care about you. It just can’t. It has too much pulling it forward to be interrupted by anything, let alone little old you. Whether you fall or manage, laugh or cry, live or die, the traffic will still unjam. The bus will roll away. People will go home to their dinners and their families and their dreamless sleeps. Squirrels will scavenge and fish will fornicate and the sunflower seedlings will stubbornly emerge every spring. Protest: flail, kick, scream until your throat reddens—whatever you want—you are entitled. Just as long as you understand that when you put yourself up against the world, you’ll always come away feeling tiny and disposable.

Blame, of any kind, is an aside, a footnote, a useless afterthought muttered out of the corner of your mouth. Perhaps we would all do to forget the why and get to work with the wires at our feet. Because when we’re done screaming and pointing fingers, we’ll still be up there in our unfairly precarious pickle. 

And in honor of my possibly deceased primate friend, we can choose to do what he so desperately wanted but couldn’t do. When the stakes are high and our knees are bloody, our hearts icy, our failures painful and abundant--when we reach that tipping point and want to surrender to self pity--collapse crying--when we think it is all just too much and we might not be able to manage anymore, we can find it in ourselves to hang on.

Professionally Promiscuous

I realized today that I am a career whore.

Exhibit A

Most of us twenty-something ladies are interested in finding (or if you’ve already found then cultivating) “the one”. We buy elf-sized dresses to stretch suggestively around our little rumps, and we spend hours every Saturday showering, shaving two thirds of our bodies, and straightening-to-then-curl, because we want to meet someone worthwhile.

Well said, Ryan

We want to feel love the way it was marketed to us on Sex and the City – like fireworks. Something beautiful that makes us insanely happy and at times just a little nuts (like Carrie 85% of the time). It should be consuming, powerful, and transcendent. And we don’t want a dud either; we want him to be smart, funny, panty-droppingly handsome (see right), and above all else, a decent man who just can’t help but love us –backarm fat, half-wavy hair, bad jokes and all.

And while we have our doubts sometimes, there is a reason we watch rom-coms and cry drops of sorrow and hopeless joy (and a tinge of envy) when that old couple coils together in a nursing-home bed and with clasped wrinkled hands, welcomes death (male readers pretending not to get this, I’m referring to the end of The Notebook). We believe it’s out there.

As with most motivated young individuals, we do not sit idly by as our biological clock drops eggs like bombs over Baghdad. Instead, we take matters into our own hands and spend our spare time at bars, nightclubs, and social gatherings, secretly hunting. Not that we don’t enjoy ourselves or have other priorities and--ahem, tons of friends--because of course we do! We're not fembots! (though the jury is still out on those girls who manage to look wide-eyed, hydrated, and freshly blow-dried after long plane rides—highly suspicious. You know the ones I mean, they never seem to slouch either. How are they doing that?!) It is just that finding this person is important to us in a way that is deep and fundamental.

Damn you fembots

And when we aren’t working towards this end, we are (whether we mean to or not) mentally managing it. Countless empty minutes of the workday or silent car rides are spent replaying, analyzing, and planning our current loves. We can’t help it. It’s one of the first questions old girlfriends ask each other over cocktails: still sleeping with Joe? What’s the deal with you and Adam? How’s not-talking-to-Brett going? So his back hair’s really a deal-breaker, huh?

We are unapologetically dogmatic in our belief that we can find our fireworks man and that when he comes we’ll somehow magically know and melt into a happiness more freeing than a permanent overdose of E (or so I hear…). Kind of like this puppy:

Found fireworks

And so what if it means sometimes opening up a little too early and too much, or to the wrong person. Or going too far the first time around (anal WHAT?). Or letting some unworthy jerk perform what feels like a violent Irish step dance on top of your heart.

We tolerate our own recklessness and allow ourselves these blunders because they are all an earnest (albeit often misguided) attempt to find fireworks. And all other things considered (friends, family, good job—check, check, check-ish), that is what we want for ourselves. Not (as men often paranoidly suspect) marriage, just magic.

Exhibit B (coworkers)

But this is where I am unusual. I don’t know if it is because I am a really old soul (trapped in a breathtaking young body), or if it was because my parents’ marriage ended in utter catastrophe (love you mom!), but I don’t do any of this. (I’m having myself tested).

Instead, I take this desperate-to-the-point-of-sluttiness ‘man-bition’ and put it towards my professional trajectory.

That’s right, I spend my spare minutes obsessing over my long-term career with the same annoying “where is this going” micromanagement usually reserved for boyfriends/boyfriends-to-be. I think about “the future” in anxious panicky ways, wondering if I will ever be “truly happy” with this path I’m on. I exhaust myself expecting fireworks from my career the way most women expect them from “the one”. And when it inevitably disappoints, I become as surly as a forgotten girlfriend on Valentine’s Day.

Oh dear God

For me, fireworks means being professionally challenged, stimulated, and fulfilled. Not every moment of every day, of course, because I understand that tediousness and disappointment are inevitable (in relationships as well as at work), but I yearn to minimize them. After all, this path that I am deciding upon right now is the thing that I will probably spend most of my waking hours doing: 8-10 hours a day, 5 days a week, 49 weeks a year, for the next 50 years. That’s 122,500 precious hours! Shouldn’t it be nothing short of fantastic?

Because of this self-imposed pressure, I flit between passions the same way socialites juggle I-bankers, wondering which path will turn out to be the prince charming of careers. I obsesses over researching new fields, constantly revamping my resume to make myself more attractive to yet another industry. I dread picking a grad program and narrowing my scope, but am also anxious to enroll--before menopause! I live perpetually envious and terrified of specialization.

And just like the long and arduous search for love, all these wrong turns and rejections prove exhausting and discouraging. Every so often I succumb to fear; I crouch down on the shower floor and with palms covering my face let hot tears blend into the rivulets of water slipping off my chin, steaming up mirrors with my angst at the overwhelming options, at the impossibility of ever finding that one thing that I was born to do. My bliss. (#dramaqueen)

Of course I know even as I write this, that the idea of finding “the perfect job” is just as laughable –if not more so—than finding the perfect guy. You can’t expect any one thing to make you feel whole or satiated. It is like trying to get all your nutrition from one food.

And I also recognize that my behavior is just as naïve, impractical, and ultimately self-destructive as those women who plunge blindly into relationships, expecting too much too soon and setting themselves up to be under-whelmed. But somehow, just like them, I justify my behavior because my intentions are honest ones (misguided maybe, but honest). Besides, what else would you have me do? Nothing?

I’m beginning to think nothing might be better. Life is funny (and not always in the ha-ha sense). Most of the time this “magic” we are tearing our lives apart looking for seems to happen when our backs are turned. Whether you’re searching for love, career, or both, perhaps our deepest desires are less like a high-hanging fruit and more like a watched pot—all we can do is fill it with water, light the stove, and practice patience. If we do these things, eventually, it has to boil. It just has to.

One of my favorite college professors (gray ear hair, platypus lips) liked to use the metaphor of a door closing into a lock to explain the way things at the end of a poem slide into place. Sometimes the door seems closed but it isn’t in the latch; you must listen intently for that subtle click. It takes great skill to hear and to heed.

I think this applies to life too. However, while we are right to be listening for the click, should we really be hunting it? When listening too closely, everything grows louder – a slight buzzing from the television, the whir of ceiling fan, the tick of an oven, someone’s boots on the pavement below. If you're too focused, these small noise pollutions drown out everything else. And what’s worse—you grow antsy, are more easily frustrated by failure and more prone to false alarms.

Furthermore, with the bleak job market and the rapid decline in religious zeal over the past few generations (church attendance dropped roughly 9% or ~28.3 million Americans in the past 30 years, while unemployment increased a whopping 2.6% or 8.2 million in about the same time frame), I suspect we’ve collectively lost our trust in this idea that things work themselves out. At least, I have. Until very recently (two hours ago), I believed “destiny” was something stoners invented as an excuse to pack one more weekday bowl and order another Meat Lover’s Supreme.

But perhaps, when used correctly, this idea is not entirely naiveté and baseless. Maybe we need to recover just a little bit of trust in life’s mysterious workings (I’m picturing Adam Smith’s invisible hand v2.0–for lovers and young professionals).

Bringing sexy back

Though it is counter-intuitive and goes against every cell in our breathing, beating, bodies as can-do Americans, perhaps the goddamn-hippies and crazy-bible-thumpers were onto something; perhaps we should do a little less. Ease our death-grip on the life-compass (at least enough to return bloodflow to our taut colorless knuckles). Watch. Wait. Listen. Be.

Maybe—just maybe—we are so anxiously, "proactively" moving from lover to lover and job to job, that we are disrupting a kind of natural progression. Ever wonder why you’re either hopelessly begrudgingly single--home eating Entemen’s by the carton with an outbox spate with rejected sexts,-- OR you are trying to decide between a Friday night with three equally viable hunks and your current boyfriend? 

Ah, the single life

I suspect it has to do with some vague primordial energy (of the sort that hippies “cleanse”) and is proof that, apart from the LSATs, the bedroom, and the sports field, over-exertion gets us nowhere. Maybe our overeager seizure of our destiny is our own worst enemy. Maybe we don't need tighter butts or more obscure fellowships; maybe we just need to employ a little quiet faith.

Then again, maybe not. I don’t really know. I’m a silly 25 year old with a fantastic imagination and perfectly shaped eyebrows. I have no credentials or authority (despite what my 37 CVCs may claim). But right now this life-patience sounds like an appealing, less painful, more effective alternative to the ruthless career crusade I’ve been waging on myself (and a good way to prevent premature aging).

A few weeks ago I came across this quote by Brazilian author Paolo Coelho that continued to revisit me: “everything will be all right in the end; if it is not all right it is not the end”. I sincerely hope so. But how do I stop myself from doubting? And how does one, after all these years, learn to trust inaction?

Of that I'm not sure, but my good friends Bear, Bodie, and Piper are already proving to be great teachers:

Bear

Bodie

Piper

Is there any limit to what we can learn from Brazilians and puppies?

Good Girl Gone Bad

One day when I was 6 years old, I don’t recall why, but I was very bad for the babysitter (who happened to be my loving, generous, and sassy cousin, Marissa). Just the worst. A complete nightmare. Repeating everything she said, running and shouting all over the house, touching the crystal chandelier, conspiring with my brother on how to let a bee loose in the living room (a feat that he eventually managed without my help), and a million other things that I can’t even remember but that I am sure Marissa could bend your ear re-counting (sorry Rissa!).

Not me, but I kind of wish it was...

This behavior was puzzling to everyone (including me), because I was usually freakishly well-behaved. I thrived off being told how good I was. Ask me nicely, and I’d sit still and read for hours while you did laundry or ran errands or, in Rissa's case, used the landline to call boys while watching 90210. But not on this night.

On this particular occasion, I was so horrible that when Marissa, at wit’s end, decided to lock me in my room on extended “timeout,” I hauled my plastic Little Fischer table on top of my bed in an attempt to break out of the high ranch windows, screaming throughout the whole ordeal.

Thankfully, I was caught mid-escape wedged in the window looking down at the ground some 12 feet below. Not knowing what else to do, Marissa had acted on her usually-hollow (though very much abused) threat and called in the reinforcements: my Auntie Gail and Uncle Dan. I don't really remember how it all ended, but let's just say that I did not "go quietly".

The Happy Clan -  Cape Cod 2012

When I woke up the next morning the memory of my behavior came into sharp focus, and for the first time in my young life I understood mortification (call it the first of many moral hangovers). How could I have been so bad? Done that to Marissa? And Aunty Gail and Uncle Dan had seen it all! Oh the report they must’ve given my mother!

I was so ashamed that instead of escaping, I wanted to never leave my room. Yes, that was the new plan. If the guilt did not kill me then I would die a slow death locked in this bear-ballerina wallpapered cell. I spent the next few hours crying quietly in solitude, calling to my mother that I was not hungry (at the time I thought I was being sneaky, but in retrospect she must’ve known I was beating myself up in there). After a few hours of self-loathing, I heard a knock. My mother called for me to open the door – Aunty Gail wanted to see me.

Aunty Gail - drawn to scale

If I had known any swear words at this point, I am pretty sure I would have mentally said them all. I was terrified, embarrassed, and most of all, ashamed. But what choice did I have? Wiping my red-rimmed eyes and elbowing the loose snot from my nose, I went to let her in, to face the music, to place my neck dutifully into the gallows.

You can imagine my shock when I opened the door and was immediately pulled close into two gigantic breasts and squeezed tight with so much love it almost hurt. She murmured sweetly to me Aunty Gail loves you and I hugged her back with the kind of desperate intensity grown ups almost never put behind their embraces. I was confused but oh-so-happy. Didn’t she despise me just as much as I did myself? The realization was a profound one. She did not.

In fact, the reason she had come over that day was to give me a present (seriously?!?!!). From her purse she pulled out a hardcover children’s book called “Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day,” and we began to read it. It was about a child who also had a funky “off-day,” and it reminded us that with a little forgiveness, each day is a chance to start over.

It is not that I grew up in a house without love, because it was quite the opposite. I grew up showered with so much love that I understood in a deep way—and probably took for granted—what it was like to be loved unconditionally. That morning when I woke up, I knew without question that of course everyone still loved me. But they didn’t have to be nice to me. Or even really like me anymore. You see, it was a fair house, and we had rules for this sort of thing. I knew the rules, and us Swansons strongly disapproved of bad-asses (I would later learn that almost all the adults were a bit hypocritical in this stance). 

Despite being a strict enforcer of this familial law of ethics, my Aunty Gail is a woman of incredible insight and kindness, who knew me far better than I could fathom. She somehow instinctually understood that the lesson I needed this time was not one about acting-up, but about learning how to forgive yourself. And how to accept others’ forgiveness. She understood that in order for me to find the strength do this, I needed to understand how much I was loved. So she showed on up.

Aunty Gail, me, Uncle Dan, WFU graduation 2010

These moments are not always easy to spot. Sometimes when a person acts out or does something to disappoint, your instinct is to punish them, make them understand the consequences of their actions. And more often than not, this is an appropriate response. However, sometimes—just sometimes—a person is too frail for all that. Sometimes what they really need is for us to walk towards them with open arms as they continue to fire bullets and repeat: I love you, I love you, I love you.

I say this because yesterday I had to walk into the range of fire for someone. And I couldn’t have known to do it without my Aunty Gail (Oh I love my Aunty Gail, yes I do...)

I'm not usually this mushy (I have actually been called emotionally constipated and cold-as-Russia by separate people), but I want to remind my readers (so, my mom) of these moments and these people because I think we have relegated them to the stuff of Hallmark/Disney fables, but they are so real. And they are the catalysts for so much future compassion. We all have an Aunty Gail to be thankful for. And isn't today just as good a day as any to return the favor?

It does not take much to be someone else's saving grace. Let's get to it! 

PS - I'm sorry but I did not bring any embarassing baby photos to Nepal. I tried google-imaging "bad little girl" to see if I could find a funny picture for this entry, but... I'll let your imaginations fill in the blanks, perverts.