Finding Shangri-la

Everyone defines Shangri-la differently.  One of the first films I came to love was a 1937 epic by Frank Capra called Lost Horizon.  Despite being one of the best and most thoughtful films of its time ever produced not many people know about it.  The movie contained a message of peace and pacifism at a time when the world was gearing up for war.   In it, actor Ronald Coleman escapes the violence and turmoil of China to find the mythic Shangri-la lost in the Himalayas.  Shangri-la for Coleman was a peaceful place filled with beauty, thought and contemplation, yet for others it might be something completely different.  We all have our own definitions for everything in life.  Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously replied in 1964 when answering the question what is

Justice Potter Stewart

pornography? "I know it when I see it."

In truth Shangri-la is a concept so intrinsically personal only you will know it when you find it.  It is very much like Buddhist enlightenment.   Only those reaching enlightenment can truly understand, the rest can only strive to one day join them.

A very old coworker and friend of mine is retired here in Chiang Mai.  When I knew I was moving to Thailand I re-established contact with him and asked him about his life.  "Patrick," he told me, "I found my Shangri-la."  Like Ponce de Leon looking for the Fountain of Youth many will never find their perfect place, most will never even attempt to look.  Yesterday I had the chance to take a little raft ride down a small river East of Chiang Mai.  It was a beautiful setting.  Lushly green forests set against mountains shrouded in a layer of fog.  Hand made bridges spanning the water delicately framing the forest canopy. At one point we came around a bend and a lodge sat on one bank separated from the main road by high bridge stretched from one bank to another.  Some of the buildings reminded me of a park lodge in the United States.  Anchored to the hill side along the river they offered perches where you could sit like a bird looking at the valley bellow.  On one bank elephants crept up from a swim in the river with a tourist or two on their backs.  It was a lovely sight but I still didn't understand.

Our raft trip concluded and we circled back to the lodge for lunch.  It was a perfect place, beautiful and harmonious with it's surroundings.  Around me ethnic mountain tribes women from Burma and Thailand worked to prepare the meal and cater to the guests.  As I ate I listened and to a young American volunteer explain it was not just a hotel.  No, this place was much more than a hotel, it was a Shangri-la.  It was Shangri-la for the women that surrounded me.  Beautiful in their simplicity their dark skin was contrasted by the bright ethnic dresses they wore.  These women while seemingly now at peace had been victims.  Victims of exploitation, human rights abuses and sex trafficking.  These women had found their refuge.  It was a place for them to heal and to learn new skills.  A place where their voices meant something.  A place where they were learning they had value and a place in the world.  Their destiny was not to be a slave to the wishes of another, it was to be a human being in their own right.

I had a private conversation with the director of the effort and her passionate American volunteer.  Together with her husband an ethnic Karin this woman had carved out a sanctuary on this bank of this small northern Thai river.  Suddenly the women around me her included, felt like the bravest human's I had ever met.  Not only were they rebuilding their lives, they were continuing a path to help others.  Some were risking their own lives to return to the forests and smuggle medical supplies into Burma to help out their people.  I felt so small and insignificant in their presence, filled with such admiration for each and every one of them.   My eyes wanted to cloud with tears for the beauty they portrayed.  Beauty of humanity and love for those in need and the protection of a precious environment.  I did my best to choke back my own emotion because it felt selfish.  Selfish in the face of those that needed and deserved so much more.

The energy around me was truly astounding.  It was an intensity i have rarely encountered.   The kind that makes you want to stop and just let it absorb into every crack and crevice of your being.  I will most certainly visit them again.  Now I contemplate the smallest things I can do to support their most noble effort.

Every so often in life you come across a seed that can grow and change the world.  This place was such a seed.  It was being watered and cared for by wonderful human beings and at this very moment it is growing.  It is coloring the banks of this Shangri-la and has already become the most beautiful flower I have ever seen.