Tech bubble / time warp

You know what's awesome about technology? That we can stay in contact with our friends around the world. I can email my friends in Normandy and we can arrange for me to visit by LIVE VIDEO CHATTING, and then I get in an airplane and fly through the the air like a princess on a magic carpet.

You know what is NOT awesome about technology? That we are in such constant contact that no one ever shuts the hell off. I just keep getting emails until 5 am, and then they stop for 5 minutes. And then they start again.

And the absolute worst place to live for all of this is the east coast. You get screwed by Europe who makes you get out of bed early and then leaves you hanging in the middle of the day. You get screwed by the west coast who rolls into work at 1pm your time and really only gets the ball rolling by the time you should be going home.

.................

My friend living in Africa was at a wedding this weekend where the groom was TWO HOURS LATE. And no explanation. He was just running late. This friend also explained the difference between saying "now" (which means 'yeah whenever the hell I feel like it'...Aka maybe in 4 hours or so) and "now now now now now" (which translates to 'hurry the fuck up. This is not a drill')

How can cultures have such wildly different concepts of time??

Also, I gotta move somewhere where time doesn't exist.

No Exit

In high school my favorite subjects were French and English, and even as a pre-teen my preferred literary movements were existentialism and transcendentalism. My favorite historical time periods were the Age of Enlightenment and La Belle Epoque. 

Honey, I'm sad

In college I had a poster of Kurt Cobain on my dorm room wall that said, "I hate myself and I want to die, and then when I graduated and moved to a town so beautiful, it is literally a living Cézanne painting. 

Yeah, so I'm a walking paradox. 

I don't even care how ridiculous yet cliché that all sounds strung together, but it does explain why I often feel mostly like a tormented, fragmented and lost soul who somehow remains constantly in search of true happiness, higher truths and eternal bliss. 

My dichotomous literary proclivities and penchant for opposite end of the spectrum living conditions, led me to fully comprehend and embrace at a young and impressionable age Sartre's idea that, "L'enfer, c'est les autres," yet I still somehow remain dedicated to finding a life path where I could, "live deep and suck out all the marrow of life."

So sometimes I feel like a complete fraud. As if, just because I want to explore life's purpose, that for some reason means I'm not allowed to also sometimes feel empty, lost and completely annoyed by everyone and everything around me. 

I also have a hard time accepting the low existential moments in life where you reevaluate and question everything, because I know that it can also be lavender fields and honey. 

A gap in time

In running from one thing to the next, trying to stay afloat, trying to "make it" (which sometimes means just barely getting by), it's important to stop and look around. Stop and see where you are and where you're going. Who do you want to be and more importantly, what are you going to do to become that person?

... because if you don't take the time to do this once in a while, you'll just end up wide awake at 5am thinking about it all at once.

sans titre

you can't always be happy, but you don't have to always be sad

Tuliameni Kalomoh.

A close friend who has been serving in the Peace Corps for almost three years sent me an amazing email the other day that got my wheels turning. Where she lives in Namibia, it is common, and actually necessary, to hitch-hike in order to get around. The other day she was picked up by former Namibian Ambassador to the U.S. She shared his incredible story and thoughts on African life, family, post-apartheid, and other deep thoughts. 

The most striking part she shared was this: 

What are we doing with this access to knowledge? 

"He mentioned that the main thing he misses about living in America is cheap and easy access to books, which doesn't really exist in Namibia. Windhoek is one of the only places with bookstores, and the selection is not spectacular/things are expensive. It's nearly impossible for Namibian teachers to develop a "culture of reading" with their learners when books - especially quality books - are so hard to come by."

As an obsessive reader and media addict, this put things in necessary perspective and made me begin to question my reality. We are living in an information sharing age where we have constant access to anything we could ever imagine. In one click, I was able to read about the man who had sat next to my friend in Namibia and made these observations. 

And we have all this access to information, yet we squander it. We can know anything and everything, but we choose to devote our time to taking pictures of our food, "liking" stuff, and looking at Kim Kardashian's shoes. What will it take for us to appreciate what we have and begin using it for good? 

And side question for just me - how can I bring information and technology to Africa, and who wants to help me? Let's do that. 

Game face

Each week in teaching my yoga students I encourage them to let go of the ego and remove the facade they are required to keep up all day. As we slowly dig deeper, I encourage them to open themselves up to whatever may come - be it good or bad - and learn to accept themselves, and life as it is. Through practicing this each week in a safe and sacred place, it is my hope that they will slowly become more accepting of themselves and others. I personally believe that it is through acceptance and non judgement that we will become a happier, more peaceful, and more accepting society.

That is the yin.

This is the yang. I also exist in the corporate world where none of these practices are valued, or even tolerated in many cases. We are expected to wear a mask and keep up the illusion, despite strenuous and stressful circumstances. Showing any signs of vulnerability are frowned upon and viewed as weak.

So how can we reconcile these two worlds? Yoga teaches the value of balance, and for the yin to exist, we must have yang. The yang cannot be discounted or ignored.

In my personal experience coexisting in these two worlds often leaves me feeling like a crazy person being pulled constantly in two vastly different directions.

I would love nothing more than to renounce my current existence and live a life of yin, a life of calm, a life of peace. But what value would I be to society then? How could I connect to people in need if I had no concept of their reality? What is my pain and struggle here to teach me? How can I reconcile the two worlds and feel whole?

Just some questions to consider over the weekend...