The Great Escape

For better or for worse people come to Thailand to escape.  Oh some will emphatically tell you they came to find something but in truth there is a fine line between the two.  The very essence of escape allows us a chance for discovery.

I grew up in the northern most outpost of the nation.   Living in Alaska there was always a long standing truth hanging over everyone's head.  With the exception of us who were born or simply raised there just about every adult moved north to get away from something.  My parents used to always joke that moving to Alaska was as far away as they could possibly get from their parents and still be in America.  I suppose Hawaii would have been farther but the logistics of crossing an ocean versus loading up their cars made Alaska the appropriate choice.

As we age the weight of life tends to add up.  I think we don't really know that it is happening and many never really realize that it did.  We start to compensate in useless ways attempting to numb the torment inside of us.  We eat to much or drink too much.  When I was a small child I used to watch comedies with my father and laugh until my eyes could cry no more.  Last night I turned on an old favorite of ours, What's New Pussycat with the legendary Peter Sellers.  I realized how long it had been since my father and I really laughed together.  I think the cumulative effect of life, burden and the perception of responsibility has left humor in it's wake.  He is only 20 years my senior yet when I watch him dealing with an elderly mother and the baggage of a lifetimes worth of decisions I can't help but wonder.  It seems like humor gives way to responsibility and emotion and the very essence of what once gave us joy seems to vanish like a departing seaside mist.  The sad truth is that we have surrendered a piece of ourselves to circumstance that we ourselves have created and are forcing ourselves to live by. 

These days as I contemplate my own future I have begun to look at the lives of others living around me.  The foreigners who have decided to leave behind the country of their birth and make a different

life in a place quite far away.  In truth I will likely be among them but I have begun asking myself why?  What pulls them to this land and what happens to them when they walk away from the lives they once lived?  The answers are not simple but I can say there seems to be a universal desire for a fresh start.  A cut from the frustrations of the past.  A break from the weight of lives that had compounded themselves to the extent where it left many miserable and contemplating their own existence.  Moving here seems to present a kind of blank slate.  Despite age it provides a chance to rewrite things and leave the spirits that haunt us all in the past.  Leave them securely tucked away in an other land over an ocean far ... far away.

There are undeniable costs to this freedom and unless one is willing to divorce themselves from all connection and responsibility, they live the life of a beautiful balloon still tethered to the ground.  Yet while still connected, the lines are tenuous at best,  and it is always possible an abrupt wind could break them and allow their lives to float away.

I tend to look at things far more spiritually than many do.  I think the very essence of living in a Buddhist country where introspection and consciousness in life is not only taught, it is followed, helps me look at my own life.  There are times when I feel a thousand pounds have been lifted from my shoulders.  I no longer engage in ideological debates.  I no longer turn on the TV to be told what to think by one side or another.  American politics and the problems of the nation seem so far away they will perhaps eventually leave my vocabulary.

They call people who live abroad ex-patriots.  It is quite a denigrating term.  It implies they are some how less of an American or national of whatever country they came from.  No one ever thinks that perhaps it was the nation that drove them away.  I trust you will find that most still love their native land, they just can't stand to see it destroy itself day after day, hour after hour, word after word. 

I suppose with every great escape there is always a chance of being pulled back to where you once were.  That said, I like to think that with each passing hour I am learning to live again.  Learning that life is love for those we care for and not the possessions that bind us.

Today I cannot say for sure where I will be in ten years but a little voice inside is growing louder.    Beyond my own life I find myself wishing that all those tortured in life and whom I care for could make their own great escape.   Maybe just maybe my Dad and I will laugh together again.